THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


FORDING   THE   CHAMELICON   RIVER 


THREE     GRINGOS 

IN   VENEZUELA  AND 
CENTRAL  AMERICA 


BY 

RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

HAR  PER     &     BROTHERS 

PUBLISHERS      1903 


Copyright,  i8</>,  by  HARPBR  &  BROTHERS. 


Collega 
Library 


F 


TO 

MY   FRIENDS 
H.  SOMERS    SOMERSET 

AND 

LLOYD   GRISCOM 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

ON  THE  CARIBBEAN  SEA i 

THE  EXILED  LOTTERY 27 

IN  HONDURAS 56 

AT  CORINTO 160 

ON  THE  ISTHMUS  OF  PANAMA 193 

THE  PARIS  OF  SOUTH  AMERICA                       .    ,  221 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

FORDING  THE   CHAMELICON  RIVKR Frontispiece 

MAP    OF    VENEZUELA    AND    CENTRAL    AMERICA,    SHOWING 

THE   ROUTE   OF  THE    "THREE   GRINGOS  "      ....  xiii 

GOVERNMENT    HOUSE,   BELIZE 7 

SIR   ALFRED  MOLONEY IO 

NATIVE   CONSTABULARY,  BELIZE 13 

MAIN    STREET,  BELIZE 17 

NATIVE    WOMEN   AT    LIVINGSTON 2O 

THE   GUATEMALLECAN   ARMY  AT   LIVINGSTON      ....  23 

BARRACKS   AT    PORT    BARRIOS 2$ 

THE   EXILED   LOTTERY    BUILDING 35 

THE    IGUANAS  OF    HONDURAS 5! 

OUR    NAVAL   ATTACHE 57 

OUR   MILITARY   ATTACHE 60 

A    STRETCH    OF   CENTRAL-AMERICAN    RAILWAY     ....  62 

THE   THREE    GRINGOS 64 

SETTING    OUT    FROM    SAN    PEDRO    SULA 67 

THE   HIGHLANDS    OF    HONDURAS 7! 

SOMERSET 74 

A    DRAWER    OF    WATER ,  77 

NATIVE    METHOD    OF    DRYING    COFFEE 85 

IN    A    CENTRAL-AMERICAN    FOREST 89 

ON   THE   TRAIL   TO    SANTA    BARBARA 97 

A  HALT   AT   TRINIDAD     .  IOI 


X  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

GENERAL  LOUIS  BOGRAN IO5 

OUR  PACK-TRAIN  AT  SANTA  BARBARA IO? 

A  VILLAGE  IN  THE  INTERIOR 114 

BRIDGE  CONNECTING  TEGUCIGALPA  WITH  ITS  SUBURB    .  123 

BIRD'S-EYE  VIEW  OF  TEGUCIGALPA 127 

THE  BANK  OF  HONDURAS I2Q 

STATUE  OF  MORAZAN 132 

P.  BONILLA 135 

GENERAL  LOUIS  BOGKAN,  EX-PRESIDENT 138 

HARRACKS  OF  TEGUCIGALPA  AFTER  THE  ATTACK  OF  THE 

REVOLUTIONISTS 14! 

MORAZAN,  THE  LIBERATOR  OF  HONDURAS 145 

ON  THE  WAV  TO  CORINTO 155 

PRINCIPAL  HOTEL  AND  PRINCIPAL  HOUSE  AT  CORINTO   .  l62 

HARBOR  OF  CORINTO 175 

THE  PRESIDENT'S  HOUSE  AT  MANAGUA 179 

PRESIDENT  ZEI.AYA  OF  NICARAGUA 183 

MAP  OF  THE  WORLD  SHOWING  CHANGE  IN  TRADE 
ROUTES  AFTER  THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  NICARA- 
GUA CANAL IQI 

DREDGES  IN  THE  CANAL IQ5 

THE  BAY   OF   PANAMA igg 

PANAMA   CANAL  ON   THE   PACIFIC   SIDE 2O3 

HUTS  OF   WORKMEN   EMPLOYED   ON  THE  CANAL      .      .      .  2O(> 

THE   TOP   OF   A    DREDGE 2CK) 

STREET   SCENE   IN    PANAMA 213 

THE   CANAL   IN   THE   INTERIOR 217 

STATUE   OF   SIMON    BOLIVAR,  CARACAS 223 

STATUE     OF     WASHINGTON     DECORATED     WITH     FLORAL 

WREATHS    BY   THE   VENEZUELANS 227 

DECORATION  OF  THE  STATUE  OF  BOLIVAR  AT  CARACAS, 
VENEZUELA,  DECEMBER  l8,  1895,  BY  AMERICAN  RESI- 
DENTS    231 


ILLUSTRATIONS  XI 

PAGE 

SIMON   BOLIVAR 234 

VIEW  OF  LA  GUAYRA 235 

THE  RAILROAD  UP  THE  MOUNTAIN 23Q 

COURT-YARD  OF  A  HOUSE  IN  CARACAS 243 

THE  MARKET  OF  CARACAS 247 

PRESIDENT  CRESPO,  OF  VENEZUELA 2$I 

LEGISLATIVE  BUILDING,  CARACAS 253 

THE  PRESIDENT'S  BODY-GUARD  OF  COWBOYS     ....  255 
BAPTIZING  INDIANS  AT  A  VENEZUELAN  STATION  ON  THE 

CUYUNI    RIVER 25y 

A   TYPICAL   HUNTING-PARTY    IN   VENEZUELA 263 

A   CLEARING   IN   THE   COUNTRY 267 

THE   CUYUNI    RIVER 2?I 

VIEW    OF   CARACAS Facing  274 

VENEZUELAN    STATION    ON    THE   CUYUNI    RIVER  ....  274 

ENGLISH    STATION   ON   THE   CUYUNI    RIVER 275 

DR.    PEDRO    EZEQUIEL    ROJAS 277 

MAP   EXPLAINING   VENEZUELAN   BOUNDARY    DISPUTE    .       .  2?8 

THE   CITY    OF    CARACAS 27Q 


ON   THE  CARIBBEAN    SEA 


|HE  steamer  Brcakivatcr  lay  at  the 
end  of  a  muddy  fruit -wharf  a  mile 
down  the  levee. 

She  was  listed  to  sail  that  morning 
for  Central  American  ports,  and  we  were  going 
with  her  in  search  of  warm  weather  and  other 
unusual  things.  When  we  left  New  York  the 
streets  were  lined  with  frozen  barricades  of  snow, 
upon  which  the  new  brooms  of  a  still  newer  ad- 
ministration had  made  so  little  impression  that 
people  were  using  them  as  an  excuse  for  being 
late  for  dinners ;  and  at  Washington,  while  the 
snow  had  disappeared,  it  was  still  bitterly  cold. 
And  now  even  as  far  south  as  New  Orleans  we 
were  shivering  in  our  great-coats,  and  the  news- 
papers were  telling  of  a  man  who,  the  night  be- 
fore, had  been  found  frozen  to  death  in  the 
streets.  It  seemed  as  though  we  were  to  keep 
on  going  south,  forever  seeking  warmth,  only  to 
find  that  Nature  at  every  point  of  lower  latitude 


2  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

had  paid  us  the  compliment  of  changing  her 
season  to  spite  us. 

So  the  first  question  we  asked  when  we  came 
over  the  side  of  the  Breakwater  was  not  when 
we  should  first  see  land,  but  when  we  should 
reach  warm  weather. 

There  were  four  of  us,  counting  Charlwood, 
young  Somerset's  servant.  There  was  Henry 
Somers  Somerset,  who  has  travelled  greater  dis- 
tances for  a  boy  still  under  age  than  any  other 
one  of  his  much- travelled  countrymen  that  I 
have  ever  met.  He  has  covered  as  many  miles 
in  the  last  four  years  as  would  make  five  trips 
around  the  world,  and  he  came  with  me  for  the 
fun  of  it,  and  in  what  proved  the  vain  hope  of 
big  game.  The  third  was  Lloyd  Griscom,  of 
Philadelphia,  and  later  of  London,  where  he  has 
been  attache  at  our  embassy  during  the  present 
administration.  He  had  been  ordered  south  by 
his  doctor,  and  only  joined  us  the  day  before  we 
sailed. 

We  sat  shivering  under  the  awning  on  the 
upper  deck,  and  watched  the  levees  drop  away 
on  either  side  as  we  pushed  down  the  last  ninety 
miles  of  the  Mississippi  River.  Church  spires 
and  the  roofs  of  houses  showed  from  the  low- 
lying  grounds  behind  the  dikes,  and  gave  us  the 
impression  that  we  were  riding  on  an  elevated 
road.  The  great  river  steamers,  with  paddle- 
wheels  astern  and  high  double  smoke-stacks,  that 


ON    THE    CARIBBEAN    SEA  3 

were  associated  in  our  minds  with  pictures  of  the 
war  and  those  in  our  school  geographies,  passed 
us,  pouring  out  heavy  volumes  of  black  smoke, 
on  their  way  to  St.  Louis,  and  on  each  bank  we 
recognized,  also  from  pictures,  magnolia -trees 
and  the  ugly  cotton  -  gins  and  the  rows  of  ne- 
groes' quarters  like  the  men's  barracks  in  a  fort. 
At  six  o'clock,  when  we  had  reached  the  Gulf, 
the  sun  sank  a  blood-red  disk  into  great  desolate 
bayous  of  long  grass  and  dreary  stretches  of  va- 
cant water.  Dead  trees  with  hanging  gray  moss 
and  mistletoe  on  their  bare  branches  reared  them- 
selves out  of  the  swamps  like  gallows-trees  or  giant 
sign -posts  pointing  the  road  to  nowhere;  and 
the  herons,  perched  by  dozens  on  their  limbs  or 
moving  heavily  across  the  sky  with  harsh,  melan- 
choly cries,  were  the  only  signs  of  life.  On  each 
side  of  the  muddy  Mississippi  the  waste  swamp- 
land stretched  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  and 
every  blade  of  the  long  grass  and  of  the  stunted 
willows  and  every  post  of  the  dikes  stood  out 
black  against  the  red  sky  as  vividly  as  though  it 
were  lit  by  a  great  conflagration,  and  the  stag- 
nant pools  and  stretches  of  water  showed  one 
moment  like  flashing  lakes  of  fire,  and  the  next, 
as  the  light  left  them,  turned  into  mirrors  of  ink. 
It  was  a  scene  of  the  most  awful  and  beautiful 
desolation,  and  the  silence,  save  for  the  steady 
breathing  of  the  steamer's  engine,  was  the  si- 
lence of  the  Nile  at  night. 


4  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

For  the  next  three  days  we  dropped  due  south 
as  the  map  lies  from  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi 
through  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Caribbean 
Sea.  It  was  moonlight  by  night,  and  sun  and 
blue  water  by  day,  and  the  decks  kept  level,  and 
the  vessel  was  clean. 

Our  fellow- passengers  were  banana -planters 
and  engineers  going  to  Panama  and  Blucficlds, 
and  we  asked  them  many  questions  concerning 
rates  of  exchange  and  the  rainy  season  and  dis- 
tances and  means  of  transportation,  to  which 
they  gave  answers  as  opposite  as  can  only  come 
from  people  who  have  lived  together  in  the  same 
place  for  the  greater  part  of  their  lives. 

Land,  when  it  came,  appeared  in  the  shape  of 
little  islands  that  floated  in  mid -air  above  the 
horizon  like  the  tops  of  trees,  without  trunks 
to  support  them,  or  low -lying  clouds.  They 
formed  the  skirmish-line  of  Yucatan,  the  north- 
ern spur  of  Central  America,  and  seemed  from 
our  decks  as  innocent  as  the  Jersey  sand-hills, 
but  were,  the  pilot  told  us,  inhabited  by  wild 
Indians  who  massacre  people  who  are  so  un- 
fortunate as  to  be  shipwrecked  there,  and  who 
will  not  pay  taxes  to  Mexico.  But  the  little  we 
saw  of  their  savagery  was  when  we  passed  within 
a  ship's  length  of  a  ruined  temple  to  the  Sun, 
standing  conspicuously  on  a  jutting  point  of  land, 
with  pillars  as  regular  and  heavily  cut  as  some 
of  those  on  the  Parthenon.  It  was  interesting 


ON    THE    CARIBBEAN    SEA  5 

to  find  such  a  monument  a  few  days  out  from 
New  Orleans. 

Islands  of  palms  on  one  side  and  blue  moun- 
tains on  the  other,  and  water  as  green  as  cor- 
roded copper,  took  the  place  of  the  white  sand- 
banks of  Yucatan,  and  on  the  third  day  out  we 
had  passed  the  Mexican  state  and  steamed  in 
towards  the  coast  of  British  Honduras,  and  its 
chief  seaport  and  capital,  Belize. 

British  Honduras  was  formerly  owned  by 
Spain,  as  was  all  of  Central  America,  and  was, 
on  account  of  its  bays  and  islands,  a  picturesque 
refuge  for  English  and  other  pirates.  In  the 
seventeenth  century  English  logwood-cutters  vis- 
ited the  place  and  obtained  a  footing,  which  has 
been  extended  since  by  concessions  and  by  con- 
quest, so  that  the  place  is  now  a  British  depend- 
ency. It  forms  a  little  slice  of  land  between 
Yucatan  and  Guatemala,  one  hundred  and  seven- 
ty-four miles  in  its  greatest  length,  and  running 
sixty-eight  miles  inland. 

Belize  is  a  pretty  village  of  six  thousand  peo- 
ple, living  in  low,  broad-roofed  bungalows,  lying 
white  and  cool-looking  in  the  border  of  waving 
cocoanut-trees  and  tall,  graceful  palms.  It  was 
not  necessary  to  tell  us  that  Belize  would  be  the 
last  civilized  city  we  should  see  until  we  reached 
the  capital  of  Spanish  Honduras.  A  British  col- 
ony is  always  civilized  ;  it  is  always  the  same,  no 
matter  in  what  latitude  it  may  be,  and  it  is  al- 


6  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

ways  distinctly  British.  Every  one  knows  that 
an  Englishman  takes  his  atmosphere  with  him 
wherever  he  goes,  but  the  truth  of  it  never  im- 
pressed me  so  much  as  it  did  at  Belize.  There 
were  not  more  than  two  hundred  English  men 
and  women  in  the  place,  and  yet,  in  the  two 
halves  of  two  days  that  I  was  there  I  seemed  to 
see  everything  characteristic  of  an  Englishman 
in  his  native  land.  There  were  a  few  concessions 
made  to  the  country  and  to  the  huge  native  pop- 
ulation, who  are  British  subjects  themselves;  but 
the  colony,  in  spite  of  its  surroundings,  was  just 
as  individually  English  as  is  the  shilling  that  the 
ship's  steward  pulls  out  of  his  pocket  with  a 
handful  of  the  queer  coin  that  he  has  picked  up 
at  the  ports  of  a  half-dozen  Spanish  republics. 
They  may  be  of  all  sizes  and  designs,  and  of 
varying  degrees  of  a  value,  or  the  lack  of  it, 
which  changes  from  day  to  day,  but  the  English 
shilling,  with  the  queen's  profile  on  one  side  and 
its  simple  "  one  shilling  "  on  the  other,  is  worth 
just  as  much  at  that  moment  and  at  that  dis- 
tance from  home  as  it  would  be  were  you  hand- 
ing it  to  a  hansom-cab  driver  in  Piccadilly.  And 
we  were  not  at  all  surprised  to  find  that  the 
black  native  police  wore  the  familiar  blue-and- 
white-striped  cuff  of  the  London  bobby,  and  the 
district-attorney  a  mortar-board  cap  and  gown, 
and  the  colonial  bishop  gaiters  and  an  apron. 
It  was  quite  in  keeping,  also,  that  the  advertise- 


ON   THE   CARIBBEAN    SEA  9 

ments  on  the  boardings  should  announce  and 
give  equal  prominence  to  a  "Sunday-school 
treat"  and  a  boxing -match  between  men  of 
H.M.S.  Pelican,  and  that  the  officers  of  that  man- 
of-war  should  be  playing  cricket  with  a  local 
eleven  under  the  full  tropical  sun,  and  that  the 
chairs  in  the  Council  -  room  and  Government 
House  should  be  of  heavy  leather  stamped  V.R., 
with  a  crown  above  the  initials.  An  American 
official  in  as  hot  a  climate,  being  more  adaptable, 
would  have  had  bamboo  chairs  with  large,  open- 
wrork  backs,  or  would  have  even  supplied  the 
council  with  rocking-chairs. 

Lightfoot  agreed  to  take  us  ashore  at  a  quarter 
of  a  dollar  apiece.  He  had  a  large  open  sail-boat, 
and  everybody  called  him  Lightfoot  and  seemed 
to  know  him  intimately,  so  we  called  him  Light- 
foot  too.  He  was  very  black,  and  light-hearted 
at  least,  and  spoke  English  with  the  soft,  hesitat- 
ing gentleness  that  marks  the  speech  of  all  these 
natives.  It  was  Sunday  on  land,  and  Sunday  in 
an  English  colony  is  observed  exactly  as  it  should 
be,  and  so  the  natives  were  in  heavily  starched 
white  clothes,  and  were  all  apparently  going  some- 
where to  church  in  rigid  rows  of  five  or  six.  But 
there  were  some  black  soldiers  of  the  West  India 
Regiment  in  smart  Zouave  uniforms  and  turbans 
that  furnished  us  with  local  color,  and  we  pursued 
one  of  them  for  some  time  admiringly,  until  he  be- 
come nervous  and  beat  a  retreat  to  the  barracks. 


10  THKKK   C.RINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

Somerset  had  a  letter  from  his  ambassador  in 
Washington  to  Sir  Alfred  Moloney,  K.C.M.G., 
the  governor  of  British  Honduras,  and  as  we 
hoped  it  would  get  us  all  an  invitation  to  dinner, 


SIR    Al.FKKI)    .MOLONEY 
(Central  Figure) 


we  urged  him  to  present  it  at  once.  Four  days 
of  the  ship's  steward's  bountiful  dinners,  served 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  had  made  us 
anxious  for  a  change  both  in  the  hour  and  the 


ON    THE   CARIBBEAN    SEA         .  II 

diet.  The  governor's  house  at  Belize  is  a  very 
large  building,  fronting  the  bay,  with  one  of  the 
finest  views  from  and  most  refreshing  breezes  on 
its  veranda  that  a  man  could  hope  to  find  on  a 
warm  day,  and  there  is  a  proud  and  haughty 
sentry  at  each  corner  of  the  grounds  and  at  the 
main  entrance.  A  fine  view  of  blue  waters  be- 
yond a  green  turf  terrace  covered  with  cannon 
and  lawn-tennis  courts,  and  four  sentries  march- 
ing up  and  down  in  the  hot  sun,  ought  to  make 
any  man,  so  it  seems  to  me,  content  to  sit  on  his 
porch  in  the  shade  and  feel  glad  that  he  is  a 
governor. 

Somerset  passed  the  first  sentry  with  safety, 
and  we  sat  down  on  the  grass  by  the  side  of  the 
road  opposite  to  await  developments,  and  were 
distressed  to  observe  him  make  directly  for  the 
kitchen,  with  the  ambassador's  letter  held  firmly 
in  his  hand.  So  we  stood  up  and  shouted  to  him 
to  go  the  other  way,  and  he  became  embarrassed, 
and  continued  to  march  up  and  down  the  gravel 
walk  with  much  indecision,  and  as  if  he  could 
not  make  up  his  mind  where  he  wanted  to  go, 
like  the  grenadiers  in  front  of  St.  James's  Palace. 
It  happened  that  his  excellency  was  out,  so 
Somerset  left  our  cards  and  his  letter,  and  we 
walked  off  through  the  green,  well-kept  streets 
and  wondered  at  the  parrots  and  the  chained 
monkeys  and  the  Anglicized  little  negro  girls  in 
white  cotton  stockings  and  with  Sunday-school 


12  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

books  under  their  arms.  All  the  show-places  of 
interest  were  closed  on  that  day,  so,  after  an  in- 
effectual attempt  to  force  our  way  into  the  jail, 
which  we  mistook  for  a  monastery,  we  walked 
back  through  an  avenue  of  cocoanut-palms  to  the 
International  Hotel  for  dinner. 

We  had  agreed  that  as  it  was  our  first  dinner 
on  shore,  it  should  be  a  long  and  excellent  one, 
with  several  kinds  of  wine.  The  International 
Hotel  is  a  large  one,  with  four  stories,  and  a 
balcony  on  each  floor;  and  after  wandering  over 
the  first  three  of  these  in  the  dark  we  came  upon 
a  lonely  woman  with  three  crying  children,  who 
told  us  with  reproving  firmness  that  in  Belize  the 
dinner-hour  is  at  four  in  the  afternoon,  and  that 
no  one  should  expect  a  dinner  at  seven.  We 
were  naturally  cast  down  at  this  rebuff,  and  even 
more  so  when  her  husband  appeared  out  of  the 
night  and  informed  us  that  keeping  a  hotel  did 
not  pay — at  least,  that  it  did  not  pay  him — and 
that  he  could  not  give  us  anything  to  drink  be- 
cause he  had  not  renewed  his  license,  and  even  if 
he  had  a  license  he  would  not  sell  us  anything 
on  Sunday.  He  had  a  touch  of  malaria,  he  said, 
and  took  a  gloomy  view  of  life  in  consequence, 
and  our  anxiety  to  dine  well  seemed,  in  contrast, 
unfeeling  and  impertinent.  But  we  praised  the 
beauty  of  the  three  children,  and  did  not  set  him 
right  when  he  mistook  us  for  officers  from  the 
English  gunboats  in  the  harbor,  and  for  one  of 


ON   THE   CARIBBEAN    SEA  15 

these  reasons  he  finally  gave  us  a  cold  dinner  by 
the  light  of  a  smoking  lamp,  and  made  us  a  pres- 
ent of  a  bottle  of  stout,  for  which  he  later  re- 
fused any  money.  We  would  have  enjoyed  our 
dinner  at  Belize  in  spite  of  our  disappointment 
had  not  an  orderly  arrived  in  hot  search  after 
Somerset,  and  borne  him  away  to  dine  at  Gov- 
ernment House,  where  Griscom  and  I  pictured 
him,  as  we  continued  eating  our  cold  chicken 
and  beans,  dining  at  her  majesty's  expense,  with 
fine  linen  and  champagne,  and  probably  ice. 
Lightfoot  took  us  back  to  the  boat  in  mournful 
silence,  and  we  spent  the  rest  of  the  evening  on 
the  quarter-deck  telling  each  other  of  the  most 
important  people  with  whom  we  had  ever  dined, 
and  had  nearly  succeeded  in  re-establishing  our 
self-esteem,  when  Somerset  dashed  up  in  a  man- 
of-war's  launch  glittering  with  brass  and  union- 
jacks,  and  left  it  with  much  ringing  of  electric 
bells  and  saluting  and  genial  farewells  from  ad- 
mirals and  midshipmen  in  gold-lace,  with  whom 
he  seemed  to  be  on  a  most  familiar  and  friendly 
footing.  This  was  the  final  straw,  and  we  held 
him  struggling  over  the  ship's  side,  and  threatened 
to  drop  him  to  the  sharks  unless  he  promised 
never  to  so  desert  us  again.  And  discipline  was 
only  restored  when  he  assured  us  that  he  was  the 
bearer  of  an  invitation  from  the  governor  to  both 
breakfast  and  luncheon  the  following  morning. 
The  governor  apologized  the  next  day  for  the  in- 


1 6  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

formality  of  the  manner  in  which  he  had  sent  us 
the  invitation,  so  I  thought  it  best  not  to  tell 
him  that  it  had  been  delivered  by  a  young  man 
while  dangling  by  his  ankles  from  the  side  of  the 
ship,  with  one  hand  holding  his  helmet  and  the 
other  clutching  at  the  rail  of  the  gangway. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  of  Belize,  for  in  its 
way  it  was  one  of  the  prettiest  ports  at  which 
we  touched,  and  its  cleanliness  and  order,  while 
they  were  not  picturesque  or  foreign  to  us  then, 
were  in  so  great  contrast  to  the  ports  we  visited 
later  as  to  make  them  most  remarkable.  It  was 
interesting  to  see  the  responsibilities  and  the 
labor  of  government  apportioned  out  so  carefully 
and  discreetly,  and  to  find  commissioners  of 
roads,  and  then  district  commissioners,  and  under 
them  inspectors,  and  to  hear  of  boards  of  edu- 
cation and  boards  of  justice,  each  doing  its  ap- 
pointed work  in  this  miniature  government,  and 
all  responsible  to  the  representative  of  the  big 
government  across  the  sea.  And  it  was  reassur- 
ing to  read  in  the  blue-books  of  the  colony  that 
the  health  of  the  port  has  improved  enormously 
during  the  last  three  years. 

Monday  showed  an  almost  entirely  different 
Belize  from  the  one  we  had  seen  on  the  day 
before.  Shops  were  open  and  busy,  and  the 
markets  were  piled  high  with  yellow  oranges  and 
bananas  and  strange  fruits,  presided  over  by 
negresscs  in  rich-colored  robes  and  turbans,  and 


MAIN   STREET,  BELIZE 


ON    THE    CARIBBEAN    SEA  19 

smoking  fat  cigars.  There  was  a  show  of  justice 
also  in  a  parade  of  prisoners,  who,  in  spite  of 
their  handcuffs,  were  very  anxious  to  halt  long 
enough  to  be  photographed,  and  there  was  a 
great  bustle  along  the  wharves,  where  huge  rafts 
of  logwood  and  mahogany  floated  far  into  the 
water.  The  governor  showed  us  through  his 
botanical  station,  in  which  he  has  collected  food- 
giving  products  from  over  all  the  world,  and 
plants  that  absorb  the  malaria  in  the  air,  and  he 
hinted  at  the  social  life  of  Belize  as  well,  tempt- 
ing us  with  a  ball  and  dinners  to  the  officers  of 
the  men-of-war  ;  but  the  Breakwater  would  not 
wait  for  such  frivolities,  so  we  said  farewell  to 
Belize  and  her  kindly  governor,  and  thereafter 
walked  under  strange  flags,  and  were  met  at 
every  step  with  the  despotic  little  rules  and 
safeguards  which  mark  unstable  governments. 

Livingston  was  like  a  village  on  the  coast  of 
East  Africa  in  comparison  with  Belize.  It  is 
the  chief  seaport  of  Guatemala  on  the  Atlantic 
side,  and  Guatemala  is  the  furthest  advanced  of 
all  the  Central  American  republics ;  but  her 
civilization  lies  on  the  Pacific  side,  and  does  not 
extend  so  far  as  her  eastern  boundary. 

There  are  two  opposite  features  of  landscape 
in  the  tropics  which  are  always  found  together — 
the  royal  palm,  which  is  one  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful of  things,  and  the  corrugated  zinc-roof  cus- 
tom-house, which  is  one  of  the  ugliest.  Nature 


20 


THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


NATIVK    WOMF.N    AT    LIVINGSTON 

never  appears  so  extravagant  or  so  luxurious  as 
she  does  in  these  hot  latitudes;  but  just  as  soon 
as  she  has  fashioned  a  harbor  after  her  own 
liking,  and  set  it  off  at  her  best  so  that  it  is  a 
haven  of  delight  to  those  who  approach  it  from 
the  sea,  civilized  man  comes  along  and  hammers 
square  walls  of  zinc  together  and  spoils  the 
beauty  of  the  place  forever.  The  natives,  who 


ON   THE    CARIBBEAN    SEA  21 

do  not  care  for  customs  dues,  help  nature  out 
with  thatch  -  roofed  huts  and  walls  of  adobe  or 
yellow  cane,  or  add  curved  red  tiles  to  the  more 
pretentious  houses,  and  so  fill  out  the  picture. 
But  the  "gringo,"  or  the  man  from  the  interior, 
is  in  a  hurry,  and  wants  something  that  will  with- 
stand earthquakes  and  cyclones,  and  so  wher- 
ever you  go  you  can  tell  that  he  has  been  there 
before  you  by  his  architecture  of  zinc. 

When  you  turn  your  back  on  the  custom- 
house at  Livingston  and  the  rows  of  wooden 
shops  with  open  fronts,  you  mount  the  hill  upon 
which  the  town  stands,  and  there  you  will  find 
no  houses  but  those  which  have  been  created  out 
of  the  mud  and  the  trees  of  the  place  itself. 
There  are  no  streets  to  the  village  nor  doors  to 
the  houses ;  they  are  all  exactly  alike,  and  the 
bare  mud  floor  of  one  is  as  unindividual,  except 
for  the  number  of  naked  children  crawling  upon 
it,  as  is  any  of  the  others.  The  sun  and  the  rain 
are  apparently  free  to  come  and  go  as  they  like, 
and  every  one  seems  to  live  in  the  back  of  the 
house,  under  the  thatched  roof  which  shades  the 
clay  ovens.  Most  of  the  natives  were  coal-black, 
and  the  women,  in  spite  of  the  earth  floors  below 
and  the  earth  walls  round  about  them,  were 
clean,  and  wore  white  gowns  that  trailed  from 
far  down  their  arms,  leaving  the  chest  and  shoul- 
ders bare.  They  were  a  very  simple,  friendly 
lot  of  people,  and  ran  from  all  parts  of  the  settle- 


22  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

ment  to  be  photographed,  and  brought  us  flowers 
from  their  gardens,  for  which  they  refused  money. 

We  had  our  "first  view  of  the  Central  American 
soldier  at  Livingston,  and,  in  spite  of  all  we  had 
heard,  he  surprised  us  very  much.  The  oldest 
of  those  whom  we  saw  was  eighteen  years,  and 
the  youngest  soldiers  were  about  nine.  They 
wore  blue  jean  uniforms,  ornamented  with  white 
tape,  and  the  uniforms  differed  in  shade  accord- 
ing to  the  number  of  times  they  had  been 
washed.  These  young  men  carried  their  mus- 
kets half-way  up  the  barrel,  or  by  the  bayonet, 
dragging  the  stock  on  the  ground. 

General  Barrios,  the  young  President  of  Guate- 
mala, has  some  very  smart  soldiers  at  the  capital, 
and  dresses  them  in  German  uniforms,  which  is 
a  compliment  he  pays  to  the  young  German 
emperor,  for  whom  he  has  a  great  admiration  ; 
but  his  discipline  does  not  extend  so  far  as  the 
Caribbean  Sea. 

The  river  Dulce  goes  in  from  Livingston,  and 
we  were  told  it  was  one  of  the  things  in  Central 
America  we  ought  to  see,  as  its  palisades  were 
more  beautiful  than  those  of  the  Rhine.  The 
man  who  told  us  this  said  he  spoke  from  hear- 
say, and  that  he  had  never  been  *on  the  Rhine, 
but  that  he  knew  a  gentleman  who  had.  You 
can  well  believe  that  it  is  very  beautiful  from 
what  you  can  see  of  its  mouth,  where  it  flows 
into  the  Caribbean  between  great  dark  banks  as 


ON    THE    CARIBBEAN    SEA 


25 


high  as  the  palisades  opposite  Dobbs  Ferry,  and 
covered  with  thick,  impenetrable  green. 

Port  Barrios,  to  which  one  comes  in  a  few 
hours,  is  at  one  end  of  a  railroad,  and  surround- 
ed by  all  the  desecration  that  such  an  improve- 
ment on  nature  implies,  in  the  form  of  zinc 
depots,  piles  of  railroad-ties,  and  rusty  locomo- 
tives. The  town  consists  of  a  single  row  of 
native  huts  along  the  coast,  terminating  in  a  hos- 
pital. Every  house  is  papered  throughout  with 
copies  of  the  New  York  Police  Gazette,  which 
must  give  the  Guatemallecan  a  lurid  light  on 
the  habits  and  virtues  of  his  cousins  in  North 


I5ARRACKS    AT    PORT    BARRIOS 


26  THREE   GRINGOS    IN   CENTRAL   AMERICA 

America.  Most  of  our  passengers  left  the  ship 
here,  and  we  met  them,  while  she  was  taking  on 
bananas,  wandering  about  the  place  with  blank 
faces,  or  smiling  grimly  at  the  fate  which  con- 
demned them  and  their  blue-prints  and  transits 
to  a  place  where  all  nature  was  beautiful  and 
only  civilized  man  was  discontented. 

We  lay  at  Barrios  until  late  at  night,  wander- 
ing round  the  deserted  decks,  or  watching  the 
sharks  sliding  through  the  phosphorus  and  the 
lights  burning  in  the  huts  along  the  shore. 
At  midnight  we  weighed  anchor,  and  in  the 
morning  steamed  into  Puerto  Cortez,  the  chief 
port  of  Spanish  Honduras,  where  the  first  part 
of  our  journey  ended,  and  where  we  exchanged 
the  ship's  deck  for  the  Mexican  saddle,  and 
hardtack  for  tortillas. 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY 


years  ago,  while  I  was  passing 
through  Texas,  I  asked  a  young  man 
in  the  smoking-car  if  he  happened  to 
know  where  I  could  find  the  United 
States  troops,  who  were  at  that  time  riding  some- 
where along  the  borders  of  Texas  and  Mexico, 
and  engaged  in  suppressing  the  so-called  Garza 
revolution. 

The  young  man  did  not  show  that  he  was 
either  amused  or  surprised  at  the  abruptness  of 
the  question,  but  answered  me  promptly,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  with  minute  detail.  "  You 
want  to  go  to  San  Antonio,"  he  said,  "  and  take 
the  train  to  Laredo,  on  the  Mexican  boundary, 
and  then  change  to  the  freight  that  leaves  once 
a  day  to  Corpus  Christi,  and  get  off  at  Pena  sta- 
tion. Pena  is  only  a  water-tank,  but  you  can 
hire  a  horse  there  and  ride  to  the  San  Rosario 
Ranch.  Captain  Hardie  is  at  Rosario  with  Troop 
G,  Third  Cavalry.  They  call  him  the  Riding 


28  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

Captain,  and  if  any  one  can  show  you  all  there 
is  to  see  in  this  Garza  outfit,  he  can." 

The  locomotive  whistle  sounded  at  that  mo- 
ment, the  train  bumped  itself  into  a  full  stop  at 
a  station,  and  the  young  man  rose.  "  Good- 
day,"  he  said,  smiling  pleasantly;  "I  get  off 
here." 

He  was  such  an  authoritative  young  man,  and 
he  had  spoken  in  so  explicit  a  manner,  that  I  did 
as  he  had  directed  ;  and  if  the  story  that  fol- 
lowed was  not  interesting,  the  fault  was  mine, 
and  not  that  of  my  chance  adviser. 

A  few  months  ago  I  was  dining  alone  in  Del- 
monico's,  when  the  same  young  man  passed  out 
through  the  room,  and  stopped  on  his  way  be- 
side my  table. 

"  Do  you  remember  me  ?"  he  said.  "  I  met 
you  once  in  a  smoking-car  in  Texas.  Well, 
I've  got  a  story  now  that's  better  than  any  you'll 
find  lying  around  here  in  New  York.  You  want 
to  go  to  a  little  bay  called  Puerto  Cortez,  on  the 
eastern  coast  of  Honduras,  in  Central  America, 
and  look  over  the  exiled  Louisiana  State  Lottery 
there.  It  used  to  be  the  biggest  gambling  con- 
cern in  the  world,  but  now  it's  been  banished  to 
a  single  house  on  a  mud-bank  covered  with  palm- 
trees,  and  from  there  it  reaches  out  all  over  the 
United  States,  and  sucks  in  thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  victims  like  a  great  octopus.  You  want 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  29 

to  go  there  and  write  a  story  about  it.  Good- 
night," he  added ;  then  he  nodded  again,  with  a 
smile,  and  walked  across  the  room  and  disap- 
peared into  Broadway. 

When  a  man  that  you  have  met  once  in  a 
smoking-car  interrupts  you  between  courses  to 
suggest  that  you  are  wasting  your  time  in  New 
York,  and  that  you  ought  to  go  to  a  coral  reef  in 
Central  America  and  write  a  story  of  an  outlawed 
lottery,  it  naturally  interests  you,  even  if  it  does 
not  spoil  your  dinner.  It  interested  me,  at  least, 
so  much  that  I  went  back  to  my  rooms  at  once, 
and  tried  to  find  Puerto  Cortez  on  the  map  ;  and 
later,  when  the  cold  weather  set  in,  and  the  grass- 
plots  in  Madison  Square  turned  into  piled-up 
islands  of  snow,  surrounded  by  seas  of  slippery 
asphalt,  I  remembered  the  palm-trees,  and  went 
South  to  investigate  the  exiled  lottery.  That  is 
how  this  chapter  and  this  book  came  to  be 
written. 

Every  one  who  goes  to  any  theatre  in  the 
United  States  may  have  read  among  the  adver- 
tisements on  the  programme  an  oddly  worded 
one  which  begins,  "  Conrad  !  Conrad  !  Conrad  !" 
and  which  goes  on  to  say  that — 

"In  accepting  the  Presidency  of  the  Honduras  Na- 
tional Lottery  Company  (Louisiana  State  Lottery  Com- 
pany) I  shall  not  surrender  the  Presidency  of  the  Gulf 
Coast  Ice  and  Manufacturing  Company,  of  Bay  St.  Louis, 
Miss. 


30  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

"Therefore   address   all   proposals   for   supplies,  ma- 
chinery, etc.,  as  well  as  all  business  communications,  to 
"  PAUL  CONRAD,  Puerto  Cortez,  Honduras, 
"  Care  Central  America  Express, 

"  FORT  TAMPA  CITY, 

"  FLORIDA,  U.  S.  A." 

You  have  probably  read  this  advertisement 
often, and  enjoyed  the  na'ive  manner  in  which  Mr. 
Conrad  asks  for  correspondence  on  different  sub- 
jects, especially  on  that  relating  to  "  all  business 
communications,"  and  how  at  the  same  time  he 
has  so  described  his  whereabouts  that  no  letters 
so  addressed  would  ever  reach  his  far-away  home 
in  Puerto  Cortez,  but  would  be  promptly  stopped 
at  Tampa,  as  he  means  that  they  should. 

After  my  anonymous  friend  had  told  me  of 
Puerto  Cortez,  I  read  of  it  on  the  programme 
with  a  keener  interest,  and  Puerto  Cortez  became 
to  me  a  harbor  of  much  mysterious  moment,  of 
a  certain  dark  significance,  and  of  possible  ad- 
venture. I  remembered  all  that  the  lottery  had 
been  before  the  days  of  its  banishment,  and  all 
that  it  had  dared  to  be  when,  as  a  corporation 
legally  chartered  by  the  State  of  Louisiana,  it 
had  put  its  chain  and  collar  upon  legislatures 
and  senators,  judges  and  editors,  when  it  had 
silenced  the  voice  of  the  church  and  the  pulpit 
by  great  gifts  of  money  to  charities  and  hospi- 
tals, so  giving  out  in  a  lump  sum  with  one  hand 
what  it  had  taken  from  the  people  in  dollars  and 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  31 

half-dollars,  five  hundred  and  six  hundred  fold, 
with  the  other.  I  remembered  when  its  trade- 
mark, in  open-faced  type,  "  La.  S.  L.,"  was  as 
familiar  in  every  newspaper  in  the  United  States 
as  were  the  names  of  the  papers  themselves, 
when  it  had  not  been  excommunicated  by  the 
postmaster-general,  and  it  had  not  to  hide  its  real 
purpose  under  a  carefully  worded  paragraph  in 
theatrical  programmes  or  on  "dodgers"  or  hand- 
bills that  had  an  existence  of  a  moment  before 
they  were  swept  out  into  the  street,  and  which, 
as  they  were  not  sent  through  mails,  were  not 
worthy  the  notice  of  the  federal  government. 

It  was  not  so  very  long  ago  that  it  requires  any 
effort  to  remember  it.  It  is  only  a  few  years 
since  the  lottery  held  its  drawings  freely  and 
with  much  pomp  and  circumstance  in  the  Charles 
Theatre,  and  Generals  Beauregard  and  Early  pre- 
sided at  these  ceremonies,  selling  the  names  they 
had  made  glorious  in  a  lost  cause  to  help  a  cause 
which  was,  for  the  lottery  people  at  least,  dis- 
tinctly a  winning  one.  For  in  those  days  the 
state  lottery  cleared  above  all  expenses  seven 
million  dollars  a  year,  and  Generals  Beauregard 
and  Early  drew  incomes  from  it  much  larger 
than  the  government  paid  to  the  judges  of  the 
Supreme  Court  and  the  members  of  the  cabinet 
who  finally  declared  against  the  company  and 
drove  it  into  exile. 

There  had  been  many  efforts  made  to  kill  it 


32  THREE    ORINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

in  the  past,  and  the  state  lottery  was  called 
"the  national  disgrace  "  and  "  the  modern  slav- 
ery,' and  Louisiana  was  spoken  of  as  a  blot  on 
the  map  of  our  country,  as  was  Utah  when 
polygamy  flourished  within  her  boundaries  and 
defied  the  laws  of  the  federal  government.  The 
final  rally  against  the  lottery  occurred  in  1890, 
when  the  lease  of  the  company  expired,  and 
the  directors  applied  to  the  legislature  for  a 
renewal.  At  that  time  it  was  paying  out  but 
very  little  and  taking  in  fabulous  sums;  how 
much  it  really  made  will  probably  never  be  told, 
but  its  gains  were  probably  no  more  exaggerated 
by  its  enemies  than  was  the  amount  of  its  ex- 
penses by  the  company  itself.  Its  outlay  for  ad- 
vertising, for  instance,  which  must  have  been  one 
of  its  chief  expenses,  was  only  forty  thousand 
dollars  a  year,  which  is  a  little  more  than  a  firm 
of.  soap  manufacturers  pay  for  their  advertising 
for  the  same  length  of  time  ;  and  it  is  rather  dis- 
couraging to  remember  that  for  a  share  of  this 
bribe  every  newspaper  in  the  city  of  New  Orleans 
and  in  the  State  of  Louisiana,  with  a  few  notable 
exceptions,  became  an  organ  of  the  lottery,  and 
said  nothing  concerning  it  but  what  was  good. 
To  this  sum  may  be  added  the  salaries  of  its 
officers,  the  money  paid  out  in  prizes,  the  cost 
of  printing  and  mailing  the  tickets,  and  the  sum 
of  forty  thousand  dollars  paid  annually  to  the 
State  of  Louisiana.  This  tribute  was  considered 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  33 

as  quite  sufficient  when  the  lottery  was  first  start- 
ed, and  while  it  struggled  for  ten  years  to  make  a 
living;  but  in  1890,  when  its  continued  existence 
was  threatened,  the  company  found  it  could  very 
well  afford  to  offer  the  state  not  forty  thousand, 
but  a  million  dollars  a  year,  which  gives  a  faint 
idea  of  what  its  net  earnings  must  have  been.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  in  those  palmy  times  when  there 
were  daily  drawings,  the  lottery  received  on  some 
days  as  many  as  eighteen  to  twenty  thousand 
letters,  with  orders  for  tickets  enclosed  which 
averaged  five  dollars  a  letter. 

It  was  Postmaster -general  Wanamaker  who 
put  a  stop  to  all  this  by  refusing  to  allow  any 
printed  matter  concerning  the  lottery  to  pass 
outside  of  the  State  of  Louisiana,  which  decis- 
ion, when  it  came,  proved  to  be  the  order  of  ex- 
ile to  the  greatest  gambling  concern  of  modern 
times. 

The  lottery,  of  course,  fought  this  decision  in 
the  courts,  and  the  case  was  appealed  to  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States,  and  was  up- 
held, and  from  that  time  no  letter  addressed  to 
the  lottery  in  this  country,  or  known  to  contain 
matter  referring  to  the  lottery,  and  no  news- 
paper advertising  it,  can  pass  through  the  mails. 
This  ruling  was  known  before  the  vote  on  the 
renewal  of  the  lease  came  up  in  the  Legislature 
of  Louisiana,  and  the  lottery  people  say  that, 
knowing  that  they  could  not,  under  these  new 


34  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

restrictions,  afford  to  pay  the  sum  of  one  million 
dollars  a  year,  they  ceased  their  efforts  to  pass 
the  bill  granting  a  renewal  of  their  lease,  and  let 
it  go  without  a  fight.  This  may  or  may  not  be 
true,  but  in  any  event  the  bill  did  not  pass,  and 
the  greatest  lottery  of  all  times  was  without  a 
place  in  which  to  spin  its  wheel,  without  a  charter 
or  a  home,  and  was  cut  off  from  the  most  obvi- 
ous means  of  communication  with  its  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  supporters.  But  though  it  was 
excommunicated,  outlawed,  and  exiled,  it  was 
not  beaten  ;  it  still  retained  agents  all  over  the 
country,  and  it  still  held  its  customers,  who  were 
only  waiting  to  throw  their  money  into  its  lap, 
and  still  hoping  that  the  next  drawing  would 
bring  the  grand  prize. 

For  some  long  time  the  lottery  was  driven 
about  from  pillar  to  post,  and  knocked  eagerly 
here  and  there  for  admittance,  seeking  a  home 
and  resting-place.  It  was  not  at  first  successful. 
The  first  rebuff  came  from  Mexico,  where  it  had 
proposed  to  move  its  plant,  but  the  Mexican 
government  was  greedy,  and  wanted  too  large  a 
sum  for  itself,  or,  what  is  more  likely,  did  not 
want  so  well-organized  a  rival  to  threaten  the 
earnings  of  its  own  national  lottery.  Then  the 
republics  of  Colombia  and  Nicaragua  were  each 
tempted  with  the  honor  of  giving  a  name  to  the 
new  company,  but  each  declined  that  distinction, 
and  so  it  finally  came  begging  to  Honduras,  the 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY 


35 


least  advanced  of  all  of  the  Central  American 
republics,  and  the  most  heavily  burdened  with 
debt. 

Honduras  agreed  to  receive  the  exile,  and  to 
give  it  her  name  and  protection  for  the  sum  of 


THE   EXILED    LOTTERY   BUILDING 

twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year  and  twenty  per 
cent,  of  its  gross  earnings.  It  would  seem  that 
this  to  a  country  that  has  not  paid  the  interest 


36  THREE   GRINGOS   IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

on  her  national  debt  for  twelve  years  was  a  very 
advantageous  bargain  ;  but  as  four  presidents 
and  as  many  revolutions  and  governments  have 
appeared  and  disappeared  in  the  two  years  in 
which  the  lottery  people  have  received  their 
charter  in  Honduras,  the  benefit  of  the  arrange- 
ment to  them  has  not  been  an  obvious  one, 
and  it  was  not  until  two  years  ago  that  the  first 
drawing  of  the  lottery  was  held  at  Puerto  Cortez. 
The  company  celebrated  this  occasion  with  a 
pitiful  imitation  of  its  former  pomp  and  cere- 
mony, and  there  was  much  feasting  and  speech- 
making,  and  a  special  train  was  run  from  the  in- 
terior to  bring  important  natives  to  the  ceremo- 
nies. But  the  train  fell  off  the  track  four  times, 
and  was  just  a  day  late  in  consequence.  The 
young  man  who  had  charge  of  the  train  told  me 
this,  and  he  also  added  that  he  did  not  believe 
in  lotteries. 

During  these  two  years,  when  representatives 
of  the  company  were  taking  rides  of  nine  days 
each  to  the  capital  to  overcome  the  objections  of 
the  new  presidents  who  had  sprung  into  office 
while  these  same  representatives  had  been  mak- 
ing their  return  trip  to  the  coast,  others  were 
seeking  a  foothold  for  the  company  in  the  United 
States.  The  need  of  this  was  obvious  and  im- 
perative. The  necessity  which  had  been  forced 
upon  them  of  holding  the  drawings  out  of  this 
country,  and  of  giving  up  the  old  name  and 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  37 

trade-mark,  was  serious  enough,  though  it  had 
been  partially  overcome.  It  did  not  matter 
where  they  spun  their  wheel ;  but  if  the  com- 
pany expected  to  live,  there  must  be  some  place 
where  it  could  receive  its  mail  and  distribute  its 
tickets  other  than  the  hot  little  Honduranian 
port,  locked  against  all  comers  by  quarantine  for 
six  months  of  the  year,  and  only  to  be  reached 
during  the  other  six  by  a  mail  that  arrives  once 
every  eight  days. 

The  lottery  could  not  entirely  overcome  this 
difficulty,  of  course,  but  through  the  aid  of  the 
express  companies  of  this  country  it  was  able  to 
effect  a  substitute,  and  through  this  cumbersome 
and  expensive  method  of  transportation  its  man- 
agers endeavored  to  carry  on  the  business  which 
in  the  days  when  the  post-office  helped  them 
had  brought  them  in  twenty  thousand  letters  in 
twenty-four  hours.  They  selected  for  their  base 
of  operations  in  the  United  States  the  port  of 
Tampa,  in  the  State  of  Florida — that  refuge  of 
prize-fighters  and  home  of  unhappy  Englishmen 
who  have  invested  in  the  swamp-lands  there,  un- 
der the  delusion  that  they  were  buying  town  sites 
and  orange  plantations,  and  which  masquerades 
as  a  winter  resort  with  a  thermometer  that  not 
infrequently  falls  below  freezing.  So  Tampa  be- 
came their  home  ;  and  though  the  legislature  of 
that  state  proved  incorruptible,  so  the  lottery 
people  themselves  tell  me,  there  was  at  least  an 


38  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMER.ICA 

understanding,  between  them  and  those  in  au- 
thority that  the  express  company  was  not  to  be 
disturbed,  and  that  no  other  lottery  was  to  have 
a  footing  in  Florida  for  many  years  to  come. 

If  Puerto  Cortez  proved  interesting  when  it 
was  only  a  name  on  a  theatre  programme,  you 
may  understand  to  what  importance  it  grew 
when  it  could  not  be  found  on  the  map  of  any 
steamship  company  in  New  York,  and  when  no 
paper  of  that  city  advertised  dates  of  sailing  to 
that  port.  For  the  first  time  Low's  Exchange 
failed  me  and  asked  for  time,  and  the  ubiquitous 
Cook  &  Sons  threw  up  their  hands,  and  offered 
in  desperation  and  as  a  substitute  a  comfortable 
trip  to  upper  Kurmah  or  to  Mozambique,  pro- 
testing that  Central  America  was  beyond  even 
their  finding  out.  Even  the  Maritime  Exchange 
confessed  to  a  much  more  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  west  coast  of  China  than  of  the  little 
group  of  republics  which  lies  only  a  three  or 
four  days'  journey  from  the  city  of  New  Orleans. 
So  I  was  forced  to  haunt  the  shipping-offices  of 
Howling  Green  for  days  together,  and  convinced 
myself  while  so  engaged  that  that  is  the  only 
way  properly  to  pursue  the  study  of  geography, 
and  I  advise  every  one  to  try  it,  and  submit  the 
idea  respectfully  to  instructors  of  youth.  For 
you  will  find  that  by  the  time  you  have  in- 
terviewed fifty  shipping-clerks,  and  learned  from 
them  where  they  can  set  you  down  and  pick  you 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  39 

up  and  exchange  you  to  a  fruit-vessel  or  coast- 
ing steamer,  you  will  have  obtained  an  idea  of 
foreign  ports  and  distances  which  can  never  be 
gathered  from  flat  maps  or  little  revolving  globes. 
I  finally  discovered  that  there  was  a  line  running 
from  New  York  and  another  from  New  Orleans, 
the  fastest  steamer  of  which  latter  line,  as  I 
learned  afterwards,  was  subsidized  by  the  lottery 
people.  They  use  it  every  month  to  take  their 
representatives  and  clerks  to  Puerto  Cortez,  when, 
after  they  have  held  the  monthly  drawing,  they 
steam  back  again  to  New  Orleans  or  Tampa, 
carrying  with  them  the  list  of  winning  numbers 
and  the  prizes. 

It  was  in  the  boat  of  this  latter  line  that  we 
finally  awoke  one  morning  to  find  her  anchored 
in  the  harbor  of  Puerto  Cortez. 

The  harbor  is  a  very  large  one  and  a  very  safe 
one.  It  is  encircled  by  mountains  on  the  sea- 
side, and  by  almost  impenetrable  swamps  and 
jungles  on  the  other.  Close  around  the  waters 
of  the  bay  are  bunches  and  rows  of  the  cocoanut 
palm,  and  a  village  of  mud  huts  covered  with 
thatch.  There  is  also  a  tin  custom-house,  which 
includes  the  railroad-office  and  a  comandancia, 
and  this  and  the  jail  or  barracks  of  rotting  white- 
washed boards,  and  the  half-dozen  houses  of  one 
story  belonging  to  consuls  and  shipping  agents, 
are  the  only  other  frame  buildings  in  the  place 
save  one.  That  is  a  large  mansion  with  broad 


40  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

verandas,  painted  in  colors,  and  set  in  a  carefully 
designed  garden  of  rare  plants  and  manaca  palms. 
Two  poles  are  planted  in  the  garden,  one  flying 
the  blue-and-white  flag  of  Honduras,  the  other 
with  the  stripes  and  stars  of  the  United  States. 
This  is  the  home  of  the  exiled  lottery.  It  is  the 
most  pretentious  building  and  the  cleanest  in 
the  whole  republic  of  Honduras,  from  the  Carib- 
bean Sea  to  the  Pacific  slope. 

I  confess  that  I  was  foolish  enough  to  regard 
this  house  of  magnificent  exterior,  as  I  viewed  it 
from  the  wharf,  as  seriously  as  a  general  observes 
the  ramparts  and  defences  of  the  enemy  before 
making  his  advance.  I  had  taken  a  nine  days' 
journey  with  the  single  purpose  of  seeing  and 
getting  at  the  truth  concerning  this  particular 
building,  and  whether  I  was  now  to  be  viewed 
with  suspicion  and  treated  as  an  intruder,  whether 
my  object  would  be  guessed  at  once  and  I  should 
be  forced  to  wait  on  the  beach  for  the  next 
steamer,  or  whether  I  would  be  received  with 
kindness  which  came  from  ignorance  of  my 
intentions,  I  could  not  tell.  And  while  I  con- 
sidered, a  black  Jamaica  negro  decided  my  move- 
ments for  me.  There  was  a  hotel,  he  answered, 
doubtfully,  but  he  thought  it  would  be  better, 
if  Mr.  Barross  would  let  me  in,  to  try  for  a  room 
in  the  Lottery  Building. 

"  Mr.  Barross  sometimes  takes  boarders,"  he 
said,  "and  the  Lottery  Building  is  a  fine  house, 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  41 

sir — finest  house  this  side  Mexico  city."  He 
added,  encouragingly,  that  he  spoke  English 
"  very  good,"  and  that  he  had  been  in  London. 

Sitting  on  the  wide  porch  of  the  Lottery  Build- 
ing was  a  dark-faced,  distinguished-looking  little 
man,  a  Creole  apparently,  with  white  hair  and 
white  goatee.  He  rose  and  bowed  as  I  came  up 
through  the  garden  and  inquired  of  him  if  he 
was  the  manager  of  the  lottery,  Mr.  Barross,  and 
if  he  could  give  me  food  and  shelter.  The  gen- 
tleman answered  that  he  was  Mr.  Barross,  and 
that  he  could  and  would  do  as  I  asked,  and 
appealed  with  hospitable  warmth  to  a  tall,  hand- 
some woman,  with  beautiful  white  hair,  to  sup- 
port him  in  his  invitation.  Mrs.  Barross  assent- 
ed kindly,  and  directed  her  servants  to  place  a 
rocking-chair  in  the  shade,  and  requested  me  to 
be  seated  in  it ;  luncheon,  she  assured'me,  would 
be  ready  in  a  half-hour,  and  she  hoped  that  the 
voyage  south  had  been  a  pleasant  one. 

And  so  within  five  minutes  after  arriving  in 
the  mysterious  harbor  of  Puerto  Cortez  I  found 
myself  at  home  under  the  roof  of  the  outlawed 
lottery,  and  being  particularly  well  treated  by 
its  representative,  and  feeling  particularly  un- 
comfortable in  consequence.  I  was  heartily 
sorry  that  I  had  not  gone  to  the  hotel.  And  so, 
after  I  had  been  in  my  room,  I  took  pains  to 
ascertain  exactly  what  my  position  in  the  house 
might  be,  and  whether  or  not,  apart  from  the 


42  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

courtesy  of  Mr.  Barross  and  his  wife,  for  which 
no  one  could  make  return,  I  was  on  the  same 
free  footing  that  I  would  have  been  in  a  hotel. 
I  was  assured  that  I  was  regarded  as  a  transient 
boarder,  and  that  I  was  a  patron  rather  than  a 
guest  ;  but  as  I  did  not  yet  feel  at  ease,  I  took 
courage,  and  explained  to  Mr.  Barross  that  I 
was  not  a  coffee-planter  or  a  capitalist  looking 
for  a  concession  from  the  government,  but  that  I 
was  in  Honduras  to  write  of  what  I  found  there. 
Mr.  Barross  answered  that  he  knew  already  why 
I  was  there  from  the  New  Orleans  papers  which 
had  arrived  in  the  boat  with  me,  and  seemed 
rather  pleased  than  otherwise  to  have  me  about 
the  house.  This  set  my  mind  at  rest,  and  though 
it  may  not  possibly  be  of  the  least  interest  to 
the  reader,  it  is  of  great  importance  to  me  that 
the  same  reader  should  understand  that  all  which 
I  write  here  of  the  lottery  was  told  to  me  by 
the  lottery  people  themselves,  with  the  full 
knowledge  that  I  was  going  to  publish  it.  And 
later,  when  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  Mr. 
Duprez,  the  late  editor  of  the  States,  in  New 
( Means,  and  then  in  Tegucigalpa,  as  representa- 
tive of  the  lottery,  I  warned  him  in  the  presence 
of  several  of  our  friends  to  be  careful,  as  I  would 
probably  make  use  of  all  he  told  me.  To  which 
he  agreed,  and  continued  answering  questions 
for  the  rest  of  the  evening.  I  may  also  add  that 
I  have  taken  care  to  verify  the  figures  used  here, 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  43 

for  the  reason  that  the  lottery  people  are  at  such 
an  obvious  disadvantage  in  not  being  allowed 
by  law  to  reply  to  what  is  said  of  them,  nor  to 
correct  any  mistake  in  any  statements  that  may 
be  made  to  their  disadvantage. 

I  had  never  visited  a  hotel  or  a  country-house 
as  curious  as  the  one  presided  over  by  Mr.  Bar- 
ross.  It  was  entirely  original  in  its  decoration, 
unique  in  its  sources  of  entertainment,  and  its 
business  office,  unlike  most  business  offices,  pos- 
sessed a  peculiar  fascination.  The  stationery  for 
the  use  of  the  patrons,  arid  on  which  I  wrote  to 
innocent  friends  in  the  North,  bore  the  letter- 
head of  the  Honduras  Lottery  Company ;  the 
pictures  on  the  walls  were  framed  groups  of  lot- 
tery tickets  purchased  in  the  past  by  Mr.  Bar- 
ross,  which  had  not  drawn  prizes  ;  and  the  safe 
in  which  the  guest  might  place  his  valuables  con- 
tained a  large  canvas-bag  sealed  with  red  wax, 
and  holding  in  prizes  for  the  next  drawing  sev- 
enty-five thousand  dollars. 

Wherever  you  turned  were  evidences  of  the 
peculiar  business  that  was  being  carried  on  un- 
der the  roof  that  sheltered  you,  and  outside  in 
the  garden  stood  another  building,  containing 
the  printing-presses  on  which  the  lists  of  win- 
ning numbers  were  struck  off  before  they  were 
distributed  broadcast  about  the  world.  But  of 
more  interest  than  all  else  was  the  long,  sunshiny, 
empty  room  running  the  full  length  of  the  house, 


44  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

in  which,  on  a  platform  at  one  end,  were  two 
immense  wheels,  one  of  glass  and  brass,  and  as 
transparent  as  a  bowl  of  goldfish,  and  the  other 
closely  draped  in  a  heavy  canvas  hood  laced  and 
strapped  around  it,  and  holding  sealed  and  locked 
within  its  great  bowels  one  hundred  thousand 
paper  tickets  in  one  hundred  thousand  rubber 
tubes.  In  this  atmosphere  and  with  these  sur- 
roundings my  host  and  hostess  lived  their  life  of 
quiet  conventional  comfort — a  life  full  of  the 
lesser  interests  of  every  day,  and  lighted  for  others 
by  their  most  gracious  and  kindly  courtesy  and 
hospitable  good-will.  When  I  sat  at  their  table 
I  was  always  conscious  of  the  great  wheels,  show- 
ing through  the  open  door  from  the  room  be- 
yond like  skeletons  in  a  closet ;  but  it  was  not 
so  with  my  host,  whose  chief  concern  might  be 
that  our  glasses  should  be  filled,  nor  with  my 
hostess,  who  presided  at  the  head  of  the  table — 
which  means  more  than  sitting  there — with  that 
dignity  and  charm  which  is  peculiar  to  a  South- 
ern woman,  and  which  made  dining  with  her  an 
affair  of  state,  and  not  one  of  appetite. 

I  had  come  to  see  the  working  of  a  great  gam- 
bling scheme,  and  I  had  anticipated  that  there 
might  be  some  difficulty  put  in  the  way  of  my 
doing  so;  but  if  the  lottery  plant  had  been  a 
cider-press  in  an  orchard  I  could  not  have  been 
more  welcome  to  examine  and  to  study  it  and 
to  take  it  to  pieces.  It  was  not  so  much  that 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  45 

they  had  nothing  to  conceal,  or  that  now,  while 
they  are  fighting  for  existence,  they  would  rather 
risk  being  abused  than  not  being  mentioned  at 
all.  For  they  can  fight  abuse  ;  they  have  had 
to  do  that  for  a  long  time.  It  is  silence  and  ob- 
livion that  they  fear  now  ;  the  silence  that  means 
they  are  forgotten,  that  their  arrogant  glory  has 
departed,  that  they  are  only  a  memory.  They 
can  fight  those  who  fight  them,  but  they  cannot 
fight  with  people  who,  if  they  think  of  them  at 
all,  think  of  them  as  already  dead  and  buried. 
It  was  neither  of  these  reasons  that  gave  me  free 
admittance  to  the  workings  of  the  lottery ;  it 
was  simply  that  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barross  the 
lottery  was  a  religion  ;  it  was  the  greatest  chari- 
table organization  of  the  age,  and  the  purest 
philanthropist  of  modern  times  could  not  have 
more  thoroughly  believed  in  his  good  works  than 
did  Mrs.  Barross  believe  that  noble  and  gener- 
ous benefits  were  being  bestowed  on  mankind  at 
every  turn  of  the  great  wheel  in  her  back  parlor. 
This  showed  itself  in  the  admiration  which 
she  shares  with  her  husband  for  the  gentlemen 
of  the  company,  and  their  coming  once  a  month 
is  an  event  of  great  moment  to  Mrs.  Barross, 
who  must  find  it  dull  sometimes,  in  spite  of  the 
great  cool  house,  with  its  many  rooms  and  broad 
porches,  and  gorgeous  silk  hangings  over  the 
beds,  and  the  clean  linen,  and  airy,  sunlit  dining- 
room.  She  is  much  more  interested  in  telling 


46  THRKE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

the  news  that  the  gentlemen  brought  down  with 
them  when  they  last  came  than  in  the  result  of 
the  drawing,  and  she  recalls  the  compliments 
they  paid  her  garden,  but  she  cannot  remember 
the  number  that  drew  the  capital  prize.  It  was 
interesting  to  find  this  big  gambling  scheme  in 
the  hands  of  two  such  simple,  kindly  people,  and 
to  see  how  commonplace  it  was  to  them,  how 
much  a  matter  of  routine  and  of  habit.  They 
sang  its  praises  if  you  wished  to  talk  of  it,  but 
they  were  more  deeply  interested  in  the  lesser 
affairs  of  their  own  household.  And  at  one  time 
we  ceased  discussing  it  to  help  try  on  the  baby's 
new  boots  that  had  just  arrived  on  the  steamer, 
and  patted  them  on  the  place  where  the  heel 
should  have  been  to  drive  them  on  the  extremi- 
ties of  two  waving  fat  legs.  We  all  admired  the 
tassels  which  hung  from  them,  and  which  the 
baby  tried  to  pull  off  and  put  in  his  mouth. 
They  were  bronze  boots  with  black  buttons,  and 
the  first  the  baby  had  ever  worn,  and  the  event 
filled  the  home  of  the  exiled  lottery  with  intense 
excitement. 

In  the  cool  of  the  afternoon  Mr.  Barross  sat 
on  the  broad  porch  rocking  himself  in  a  big  bent- 
wood  chair  and  talked  of  the  civil  war,  in  which 
he  had  taken  an  active  part,  with  that  enthusiasm 
and  detail  with  which  only  a  Southerner  speaks 
of  it,  not  knowing  that  to  this  generation  in  the 
North  it  is  history,  and  something  of  which  one 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  47 

reads  in  books,  and  is  not  a  topic  of  conversa- 
tion of  as  fresh  interest  as  the  fall  of  Tammany  or 
the  Venezuela  boundary  dispute.  And  as  we  lis- 
tened we  watched  Mrs.  Barross  moving  about 
among  her  flowers  with  a  sunshade  above  her 
white  hair  and  holding  her  train  in  her  hand, 
stopping  to  cut  away  a  dead  branch  or  to  pluck 
a  rose  or  to  turn  a  bud  away  from  the  leaves  so 
that  it  might  feel  the  sun. 

And  inside,  young  Barross  was  going  over  the 
letters  which  had  arrived  with  the  morning's 
steamer,  emptying  out  the  money  that  came  with 
them  on  the  table,  filing  them  away,  and  noting 
them  as  carefully  and  as  methodically  as  a  bank 
clerk,  and  sealing  up  in  return  the  little  green 
and  yellow  tickets  that  were  to  go  out  all  over 
the  world,  and  which  had  been  paid  for  by  clerks 
on  small  salaries,  laboring-men  of  large  families, 
idle  good-for-nothings,  visionaries,  born  gamblers 
and  ne'er-do-wells,  and  that  multitude  of  others 
of  this  world  who  want  something  for  nothing, 
and  who  trust  that  a  turn  of  luck  will  accomplish 
for  them  what  they  are  too  listless  and  faint- 
hearted and  lazy  ever  to  accomplish  for  them- 
selves. It  would  be  an  excellent  thing  for  each 
of  these  gamblers  if  he  could  look  in  at  the  great 
wheel  at  Puerto  Cortez,  and  see  just  what  one 
hundred  thousand  tickets  look  like,  and  what 
chance  his  one  atom  of  a  ticket  has  of  forcing 
its  way  to  the  top  of  that  great  mass  at  the  ex- 


48  THKEK    ORINOOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

act  moment  that  the  capital  prize  rises  to  the 
surface  in  the  other  wheel.  lie  could  have  seen 
it  in  the  old  days  at  the  Charles  Theatre,  and  he 
is  as  free  as  is  any  one  to  see  it  to-day  at  Puerto 
Cortez  ;  but  I  should  think  it  would  be  unfortu- 
nate for  the  lottery  if  any  of  its  customers  be- 
came too  thorough  a  student  of  the  doctrine  of 
chances. 

The  room  in  which  the  drawings  are  held  is 
about  forty  feet  long,  well  lighted  by  many  long, 
wide  windows,  and  with  the  stage  upon  which 
the  wheels  stand  blocking  one  end.  It  is  unfur- 
nished, except  for  the  chairs  and  benches,  upon 
which  the  natives  or  any  chance  or  intentional 
visitors  are  welcome  to  sit  and  to  watch  the 
drawing.  The  larger  wheel,  which  holds,  when 
all  the  tickets  are  sold,  the  hopes  of  one  hundred 
thousand  people,  is  about  six  feet  in  diameter, 
with  sides  of  heavy  glass,  bound  together  by  a 
wooden  tire  two  feet  wide.  This  tire  or  rim  is 
made  of  staves,  formed  like  those  of  a  hogshead, 
and  in  it  is  a  door  a  foot  square.  After  the 
tickets  have  been  placed  in  their  little  rubber 
jackets  and  shovelled  into  the  wheel,  this  door  is 
locked  with  a  padlock,  and  strips  of  paper  are 
pasted  across  it  and  sealed  at  each  end,  and  so 
it  remains  until  the  next  drawing.  One  hundred 
thousand  tickets  in  rubber  tubes  an  inch  long 
and  a  quarter  of  an  inch  wide  take  up  a  great 
deal  of  space,  and  make  such  an  appreciable 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  49 

difference  in  the  weight  of  the  wheel  that  it  re- 
quires the  efforts  of  two  men  pulling  on  the 
handles  at  either  side  to  even  budge  it.  Another 
man  and  myself  were  quite  satisfied  when  we 
had  put  our  shoulders  to  it  and  had  succeeded 
in  turning  it  a  foot  or  two.  But  it  was  interest- 
ing to  watch  the  little  black  tubes  with  even 
that  slow  start  go  slipping  and  sliding  down  over 
the  others,  leaving  the  greater  mass  undisturbed 
and  packed  together  at  the  bottom  as  a  wave 
sweeps  back  the  upper  layer  of  pebbles  on  a 
beach.  This  wheel  was  manufactured  by  Jack- 
son &  Sharp,  of  Wilmington,  Delaware.  The 
other  wheel  is  much  smaller,  and  holds  the  prizes. 
It  was  made  by  John  Robinson,  of  Baltimore. 

Whenever  there  is  a  drawing,  General  W.  L. 
Cabell,  of  Texas,  and  Colonel  C.  J.  Villere,  of 
Louisiana,  who  have  taken  the  places  of  the  late 
General  Beau  regard  and  of  the  late  General 
Early,  take  their  stand  at  different  wheels,  Gen- 
eral Cabell  at  the  large  and  Colonel  Villere  at 
the  one  holding  the  prizes.  They  open  the 
doors  which  they  had  sealed  up  a  month  previ- 
ous, and  into  each  wheel  a  little  Indian  girl  puts 
her  hand  and  draws  out  a  tube.  The  tube  hold- 
ing the  ticket  is  handed  to  General  Cabell,  and 
the  one  holding  the  prize  won  is  given  to  Colonel 
Villere,  and  they  read  the  numbers  aloud  and 
the  amount  won  six  times,  three  times  in  Spanish 
and  three  times  in  English,  on  the  principle 


50  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

probably  of  the  man  in  the  play  who  had  only 
one  line,  and  who  spoke  that  twice,  "  so  that  the 
audience  will  know  I  am  saying  it." 

The  two  tickets  are  then  handed  to  young 
Barross,  who  fastens  them  together  with  a  rub- 
ber band  and  throws  them  into  a  basket  for  fur- 
ther reference.  Three  clerks  with  duplicate 
books  keep  tally  of  the  numbers  and  of  the  prizes 
won.  The  drawing  begins  generally  at  six  in 
the  morning  and  lasts  until  ten,  and  then,  every- 
body having  been  made  rich,  the  philanthropists 
and  generals  and  colonels  and  Indian  girls — and, 
let  us  hope,  the  men  who  turned  the  wheel — go 
in  to  breakfast. 

So  far  as  I  could  see,  the  drawings  are  con- 
ducted with  fairness.  But  with  only  3434  prizes 
and  100,000  tickets  the  chances  are  so  infinitesi- 
mal and  the  advantage  to  the  company  so  enor- 
mous that  honesty  in  manipulating  the  wheel 
ceases  to  be  a  virtue,  and  becomes  the  lottery's 
only  advertisement. 

But  what  is  most  interesting  about  the  lottery 
at  present  is  not  whether  it  is  or  it  is  not  con- 
ducted fairly,  but  that  it  should  exist  at  all ;  that 
its  promoters  should  be  willing  to  drag  out  such 
an  existence  at  such  a  price  and  in  so  fallen  a 
state.  This  becomes  all  the  more  remarkable 
because  the  men  who  control  the  lottery  belong 
to  a  class  which,  as  a  rule,  cares  for  the  good 
opinion  of  its  fellows,  and  is  willing  to  sacrifice 


THE   IGUANAS   OF   HONDURAS 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  53 

much  to  retain  it.  But  the  lottery  people  do 
not  seem  anxious  for  the  good  opinion  of  any 
one,  and  they  have  made  such  vast  sums  of 
money  in  the  past,  and  they  have  made  them  so 
easily,  that  they  cannot  release  their  hold  on  the 
geese  that  are  laying  the  golden  eggs  for  them, 
even  though  they  find  themselves  exiled  and  ex- 
communicated by  their  own  countrymen.  If 
they  were  thimble-riggers  or  confidence  men  in 
need  of  money  their  persistence  would  not  appear 
so  remarkable,  but  these  gentlemen  of  the  lottery 
are  men  of  enormous  wealth,  their  daughters  are 
in  what  is  called  society  in  New  Orleans  and  in 
New  York,  their  sons  are  at  the  universities,  and 
they  themselves  belong  to  those  clubs  most  diffi- 
cult of  access.  One  would  think  that  they  had 
reached  that  point  when  they  could  say  "  we  are 
rich  enough  now,  and  we  can  afford  to  spend 
the  remainder  of  our  lives  in  making  ourselves  re- 
spectable." Becky  Sharp  is  authority  for  the  fact 
that  it  is  easy  to  be  respectable  on  as  little  as  five 
hundred  pounds  a  year,  but  these  gentlemen,  hav- 
ing many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  pounds,  are 
not  even  willing  to  make  the  effort.  Two  years 
ago,  when,  according  to  their  own  account,  they 
were  losing  forty  thousand  dollars  a  month, 
which,  after  all,  is  only  what  they  once  cleared  in 
a  day,  and  when  they  were  being  driven  out  of 
one  country  after  another,  like  the  cholera  or  any 
other  disease,  it  geems  strange  that  it  never  oc- 


54  THREE    GRINGOS    IN   CENTRAL   AMERICA 

curred  to  them  to  stop  fighting,  and  to  get  into 
a  better  business  while  there  was  yet  time. 

Even  the  keeper  of  a  roulette  wheel  has  too 
much  self-respect  to  continue  turning  when  there 
is  only  one  man  playing  against  the  table,  and 
in  comparison  with  him  the  scramble  of  the  lot- 
tery company  after  the  Honduranian  tin  dol- 
lar, and  the  scant  savings  of  servant-girls  and  of 
brakesmen  and  negro  barbers  in  the  United 
States,  is  to  me  the  most  curious  feature  of  this 
once  great  enterprise. 

What  a  contrast  it  makes  with  those  other 
days,  when  the  Charles  Theatre  was  filled  from 
boxes  to  gallery  with  the  "  flower  of  Southern 
chivalry  and  beauty,"  when  the  band  played, 
and  the  major-generals  proclaimed  the  result  of 
the  drawings.  It  is  hard  to  take  the  lottery  se- 
riously, for  the  day  when  it  was  worthy  of  abuse 
has  passed  away.  And,  indeed,  there  are  few  men 
or  measures  so  important  as  to  deserve  abuse, 
while  there  is  no  measure  if  it  be  for  good  so  insig- 
nificant that  it  is  not  deserving  the  exertion  of 
a  good  word  or  a  line  of  praise  and  gratitude. 

And  the  only  emotion  one  can  feel  for  the  lot- 
tery now  is  the  pity  which  you  might  have  experi- 
enced for  William  M.  Tweed  when,  as  a  fugitive 
from  justice,  he  sat  on  the  beach  at  Santiago  de 
Cuba  and  watched  a  naked  fisherman  catch  his 
breakfast  for  him  beyond  the  first  line  of  break- 
ers, or  that  you  might  feel  for  Monte  Carlo  were 


THE    EXILED    LOTTERY  55 

it  to  be  exiled  to  a  fever-stricken  island  off  the 
swampy  coast  of  West  Africa,  or,  to  pay  the  lot- 
tery a  very  high  compliment  indeed,  that  which 
you  give  to  that  noble  adventurer  exiled  to  the 
Isle  of  Elba. 

There  was  something  almost  pathetic  to  me 
in  the  sight  of  this  great,  arrogant  gambling 
scheme,  that  had  in  its  day  brought  the  good 
name  of  a  state  into  disrepute,  that  had  boasted 
of  the  prices  it  paid  for  the  honor  of  men,  and 
that  had  robbed  a  whole  nation  willing  to  be 
robbed,  spinning  its  wheel  in  a  back  room  in  a 
hot,  half-barbarous  country,  and  to  an  audience  of 
gaping  Indians  and  unwashed  Honduranian  gen- 
erals. Sooner  than  fall  as  low  as  that  it  would 
seem  to  be  better  to  fall  altogether;  to  own 
that  you  are  beaten,  that  the  color  has  gone 
against  you  too  often,  and,  like  that  honorable 
gambler  and  gentleman,  Mr.  John  Oakhurst, 
who  "  struck  a  streak  of  bad  luck  about  the 
middle  of  February,  1864,"  to  put  a  pistol  to 
your  head,  and  go  down  as  arrogantly  and  de- 
fiantly as  you  had  lived.* 

*  Since  this  was  written,  Professor  S.  H.  Woodbridge,  of  the 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology,  has  been  successful  in 
having  a  bill  passed  which  hinders  the  lottery  still  further  by 
closing  to  it  apparently  every  avenue  of  advertisement  and  corre- 
spondence. 

The  lottery  people  in  consequence  are  at  present  negotiating 
with  the  government  of  Venezuela,  and  have  offered  it  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  a  year  and  a  share  of  the  earnings  for  its  protection. 


HONDURAS 


EGUCIGALPA  is  the  odd  name  of 
the  capital  of  the  republic  of  Hon- 
duras, the  least  advanced  of  the  re- 
publics of  Central  or  South  America. 
Somerset  had  learned  that  there  were  no  means 
of  getting  to  this  capital  from  cither  the  Pacific 
Ocean  on  one  side  or  from  the  Caribbean  Sea  on 
the  other  except  on  muleback,  and  we  argued 
that  while  there  were  many  mining-camps  and 
military  outposts  and  ranches  situated  a  nine 
days'  ride  from  civilization,  capitals  at  such  a 
distance  were  rare,  and  for  that  reason  might 
prove  entertaining.  Capitals  at  the  mouths  of 
great  rivers  and  at  the  junction  of  many  railway 
systems  we  knew,  but  a  capital  hidden  away  be- 
hind almost  inaccessible  mountains,  like  a  mon- 
astery of  the  Greek  Church,  we  had  never  seen. 
A  door-mat  in  the  front  hall  of  a  house  is  use- 
ful, and  may  even  be  ornamental,  though  it  is 


IN    HONDURAS 


57 


OUR   NAVAL   ATTACH^ 

never  interesting;  but  if  the  door-mat  be  hid- 
den away  in  the  third-story  back  room  it  instantly 
assumes  an  importance  and  a  value  which  it 
never  could  have  attained  in  its  proper  sphere  of 
usefulness. 

Our  ideas  as  to  the  characteristics  of  Hon- 
duras were  very  vague,  and  it  is  possible  that  we 
might  never  have  seen  Tegucigalpa  had  it  not 
been  for  Colonel  Charles  Jeffs,  whom  we  found 


58  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

apparently  waiting  for  us  at  Puerto  Cortez,  and 
who,  we  still  believe,  had  been  stationed  there  by 
some  guardian  spirit  to  guide  us  in  safety  across 
the  continent.  Colonel  Jeffs  is  a  young  Ameri- 
can mining  engineer  from  Minneapolis,  and  has 
lived  in  Honduras  for  the  past  eleven  years. 
Some  time  ago  he  assisted  Bogran,  when  that 
general  was  president,  in  one  of  the  revolutions 
against  him,  and  was  made  a  colonel  in  conse- 
quence. So  we  called  him  our  military  attache", 
and  Griscom  our  naval  attache,  because  he  was 
an  officer  of  the  Naval  Brigade  of  Pennsylvania. 
Jeffs  we  found  at  Puerto  Cortez.  It  was  there 
that  he  first  made  himself  known  to  us  by  telling 
our  porters  they  had  no  right  to  rob  us  merely 
because  we  were  gringos,  and  so  saved  us  some 
dollars.  He  made  us  understand  at  the  same 
time  that  it  was  as  gringos,  or  foreigners,  we 
were  thereafter  to  be  designated  and  disliked. 
We  had  no  agreement  with  Jeffs,  nor  even  what 
might  be  called  an  understanding.  He  had,  as 
I  have  said,  been  intended  by  Providence  to 
convey  us  across  Honduras,  and  every  one  con- 
cerned in  the  outfit  seemed  to  accept  that  act 
of  kindly  fate  without  question.  We  told  him 
we  were  going  to  the  capital,  and  were  on  pleas- 
ure bent,  and  he  said  he  had  business  at  the 
capital  himself,  and  would  like  a  few  days' 
shooting  on  the  way,  so  we  asked  him  to  come 
with  us  and  act  as  guide,  philosopher,  and 


IN    HONDURAS  59 

friend,  and  he  said,  "  The  train  starts  at  eight 
to-morrow  morning  for  San  Pedro  Sula,  where  I 
will  hire  the  mules."  And  so  it  was  settled,  and 
we  went  off  to  get  our  things  out  of  the  custom- 
house with  a  sense  of  perfect  confidence  in  our 
new  acquaintance  and  of  delightful  freedom 
from  all  responsibility.  And  though,  perhaps,  it 
is  not  always  best  to  put  the  entire  charge  of  an 
excursion  through  an  unknown  country  into  the 
hands  of  the  first  kindly  stranger  whom  you  see 
sitting  on  a  hotel  porch  on  landing,  we  found 
that  it  worked  admirably,  and  we  depended  on 
our  military  attache  so  completely  that  we  never 
pulled  a  cinch-strap  or  interviewed  an  ex-presi- 
dent without  first  asking  his  permission.  I  wish 
every  traveller  as  kindly  a  guide  and  as  good  a 
friend. 

The  train  to  San  Pedro  Sula  was  made  up  of 
a  rusty  engine  and  three  little  cars,  with  no 
glass  in  the  windows,  and  with  seats  too  wide 
for  one  person,  and  not  at  all  large  enough  for 
two.  The  natives  made  a  great  expedition  of 
this  journey,  and  piled  the  cramped  seats  with 
bananas  and  tortillas  and  old  bottles  filled  with 
drinking-water.  We  carried  no  luncheons  our- 
selves, but  we  had  the  greater  advantage  of 
them  in  that  we  were  enjoying  for  the  first  time 
the  most  beautiful  stretch  of  tropical  swamp 
land  and  jungle  that  we  came  across  during  our 
entire  trip  through  Honduras.  Sometimes  the 


6o 


THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


train  moved  through  tunnels  of  palms  as  straight 
and  as  regular  as  the  elms  leading  to  an  English 
country-house,  and  again  through  jungles  where 
they  grew  in  the  most  wonderful  riot  and  dis- 
order, so  that  their  branches  swept  in  through' 
the  car-windows  and  brushed  the  cinders  from 
the  roof.  The  jungle  spread  out  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  track  on  either  side,  and  we  peered 


OUR   MILITARY   ATTACH^ 


IN    HONDURAS  6l 

into  an  impenetrable  net -work  of  vines  and 
creepers  and  mammoth  ferns  and  cacti  and  giant 
trees  covered  with  orchids,  and  so  tall  that  one 
could  only  see  their  tops  by  looking  up  at  them 
from  the  rear  platform. 

The  railroad  journey  from  Puerto  Cortez  to 
San  Pedro  Sula  lasts  four  hours,  but  the  distance 
is  only  thirty -seven  miles.  This  was,  until  a 
short  time  ago,  when  the  line  was  extended  by  a 
New  York  company,  the  only  thirty-seven  miles 
of  railroad  track  in  Honduras,  and  as  it  has 
given  to  the  country  a  foreign  debt  of  $27,992,- 
850,  the  interest  on  which  has  not  been  paid 
since  1872,  it  would  seem  to  be  quite  enough. 
About  thirty  years  ago  an  interoceanic  railroad 
was  projected  from  Puerto  Cortez  to  the  Pacific 
coast,  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  forty-eight 
miles,  but  the  railroad  turned  out  to  be  a  co- 
lossal swindle,  and  the  government  was  left  with 
this  debt  on  its  hands,  an  army  of  despoiled 
stockholders  to  satisfy,  and  only  thirty- seven 
miles  of  bad  road  for  itself.  The  road  was  to 
have  been  paid  for  at  a  certain  rate  per  mile, 
and  the  men  who  mapped  it  out  made  it  in 
consequence  twice  as  long  as  it  need  to  have 
been,  and  its  curves  and  grades  and  turns  would 
cause  an  honest  engineer  to  weep  with  disap- 
proval. 

The  grades  are  in  some  places  very  steep,  and 
as  the  engine  was  not  as  young  as  it  had  been, 


6  2 


THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


two  negro  boys  and  a  box  of  sand  were  placed 
on  the  cow-catcher,  and  whenever  the  necessity 
of  stopping  the  train  was  immediate,  or  when  it 
was  going  downhill  too  quickly,  they  would 


A   STKKTCH    OK   CENTRAL-AMERICAN    RAILWAY 

lean  forward  and  pour  this  sand  on  the  rails. 
As  soon  as  Griscom  and  Somerset  discovered 
these  assistant  engineers  the}'  bribed  them  to 
give  up  their  places  to  them,  and  after  the  first 


IN    HONDURAS  63 

station  we  all  sat  for  the  remainder  of  the  jour- 
ney on  the  cow-catcher.  It  was  a  beautiful  and 
exhilarating  ride,  and  suggested  tobogganing,  or 
those  thrilling  little  railroads  on  trestles  at  Co- 
ney Island  and  at  the  fetes  around  Paris.  It  was 
even  more  interesting,  because  we  could  see  each 
rusty  rail  rise  as  the  wheel  touched  its  nearer 
end  as  though  it  meant  to  fly  up  in  our  faces, 
and  when  the  wheel  was  too  quick  for  it  and 
forced  it  down  again,  it  contented  itself  by 
spreading  out  half  a  foot  or  so  to  one  side, 
which  was  most  alarming.  And  the  interest  rose 
even  higher  at  times  when  a  stray  steer  would 
appear  on  the  rails  at  the  end  of  the  tunnel  of 
palms,  as  at  the  end  of  a  telescope,  and  we  saw 
it  growing  rapidly  larger  and  larger  as  the  train 
swept  down  upon  it.  It  always  lurched  off  to 
one  side  before  any  one  was  killed,  but  not  until 
there  had  been  much  ringing  of  bells  and  blow- 
ing of  whistles,  and,  on  our  part,  some  inward 
debate  as  to  whether  we  had  better  jump  and 
abandon  the  train  to  its  fate,  or  die  at  our  post 
with  our  hands  full  of  sand. 

We  lay  idly  at  San  Pedro  Sula  for  four  days, 
while  Jeffs  hurried  about  collecting  mules  and 
provisions.  When  we  arrived  we  insisted  on 
setting  forth  that  same  evening,  but  the  place 
put  its  spell  upon  us  gently  but  firmly,  and 
when  we  awoke  on  the  third  day  and  found  we 
were  no  nearer  to  starting  than  at  the  moment 


64  JHRtE   GRINGOS    IN    CtNlKAL    AMERICA 


THE   THREE    GRINGOS 


of  our  arrival,  Jeffs's  perplexities  began  to  be 
something  of  a  bore,  and  we  told  him  to  put 
things  off  to  the  morrow,  as  did  every  one  else. 

San  Pedro  Sula  lay  in  peaceful  isolation  in  a 
sunny  valley  at  the  base  of  great  mountains,  and 
from  the  upper  porch  of  our  hotel,  that  had  been 


IN    HONDURAS  65 

built  when  the  railroad  was  expected  to  continue 
on  across  the  continent,  we  could  see  above  the 
palms  in  the  garden  the  clouds  moving  from  one 
mountain -top  to  another,  or  lying  packed  like 
drifts  of  snow  in  the  hollows  between.  We  used 
to  sit  for  hours  on  this  porch  in  absolute  idle- 
ness, watching  Jeffs  hurrying  in  and  out  below 
with  infinite  pity,  while  we  listened  to  the  palms 
rustling  and  whispering  as  they  bent  and  cour- 
tesied  before  us,  and  saw  the  sunshine  turn  the 
mountains  a  light  green,  like  dry  moss,  or  leave 
half  of  them  dark  and  sombre  when  a  cloud 
passed  in  between.  It  was  a  clean,  lazy  little 
place  of  many  clay  huts,  with  gardens  back  of 
them  filled  with  banana-palms  and  wide-reach- 
ing trees,  which  were  one  mass  of  brilliant  crim- 
son flowers.  In  the  centre  of  the  town  was  a 
grass -grown  plaza  where  the  barefooted  and 
ragged  boy-soldiers  went  through  leisurely  evolu- 
tions, and  the  mules  and  cows  gazed  at  them 
from  the  other  end. 

Our  hotel  was  leased  by  an  American  woman, 
who  was  making  an  unappreciated  fight  against 
dirt  and  insects,  and  the  height  of  whose  am- 
bition was  to  get  back  to  Brooklyn  and  take  in 
light  sewing  and  educate  her  two  very  young 
daughters.  Her  husband  had  died  in  the  in- 
terior, and  his  portrait  hung  in  the  dining-room 
of  the  hotel.  She  used  to  talk  about  him  while 
she  was  waiting  at  dinner,  and  of  what  a  well- 

5 


66  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

read  and  able  man  he  had  been.  She  would 
grow  so  interested  in  her  stories  that  the  dinner 
would  turn  cold  while  she  stood  gazing  at  the 
picture  and  shaking  her  head  at  it.  We  became 
very  much  interested  in  the  husband,  and  used 
to  look  up  over  our  shoulders  at  his  portrait 
with  respectful  attention,  as  though  he  were 
present.  His  widow  did  not  like  Honduranians; 
and  though  she  might  have  made  enough  money 
to  take  her  home,  had  she  consented  to  accept 
them  as  boarders,  she  would  only  receive  gringos 
at  her  hotel,  which  she  herself  swept  and  scrubbed 
when  she  was  not  cooking  the  dinner  and  mak- 
ing the  beds.  She  had  saved  eight  dollars  of  the 
sum  necessary  to  convey  her  and  her  children 
home,  and  to  educate  them  when  they  got  there  ; 
and  as  American  travellers  in  Honduras  are  few, 
and  as  most  of  them  ask  you  for  money  to  help 
them  to  God's  country,  I  am  afraid  her  chance 
of  seeing  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  is  very  doubtful. 
We  contributed  to  her  fund,  and  bought  her  a 
bundle  of  lottery  tickets,  which  we  told  her 
were  the  means  of  making  money  easily ;  and  I 
should  like  to  add  that  she  won  the  grand  prize, 
and  lived  happily  on  Brooklyn  Heights  ever 
after;  but  when  we  saw  the  list  at  Panama,  her 
numbers  were  not  on  it,  and  so,  I  fear,  she  is 
still  keeping  the  only  clean  hotel  in  Hondu- 
ras, which  is  something  more  difficult  to  ac- 
complish and  a  much  more  public- spirited 


IN    HONDURAS  69 

thing  to  do  than  to  win  a  grand  prize  in  a 
lottery. 

We  left  San  Pedro  Sula  on  a  Sunday  morn- 
ing, with  a  train  of  eleven  mules ;  five  to  carry 
our  luggage  and  the  other  six  for  ourselves, 
Jeffs,  Charl wood,  Somerset's  servant,  and  Emilio, 
our  chief  moso,  or  muleteer.  There  were  two 
other  mosos,  who  walked  the  entire  distance,  and 
in  bull-hide  sandals  at  that,  guarding  and  driving 
the  pack-mules,  and  who  were  generally  able  to 
catch  up  with  us  an  hour  or  so  after  we  had 
halted  for  the  night.  I  do  not  know  which  was 
the  worst  of  the  mosos,  although  Emilio  seems 
to  have  been  first  choice  with  all  of  us.  We 
agreed,  after  it  was  all  over,  that  we  did  not  so 
much  regret  not  having  killed  them  as  that  they 
could  not  know  how  frequently  they  had  been 
near  to  sudden  and  awful  death. 

The  people  of  Honduras,  where  all  the  travel- 
ling is  done  on  mule  or  horse  back,  have  a  pretty 
custom  of  riding  out  to  meet  a  friend  when  he 
is  known  to  be  coming  to  town,  and  of  accom- 
panying him  when  he  departs.  This  latter  cere- 
mony always  made  me  feel  as  though  I  were  an 
undesirable  citizen  who  was  being  conveyed  out- 
side of  the  city  limits  by  a  Vigilance  Committee  ; 
but  it  is  very  well  meant,  and  a  man  in  Hon- 
duras measures  his  popularity  by  the  number 
of  friends  who  come  forth  to  greet  him  on  his 
arrival,  or  who  speed  him  on  his  way  when  he 


70  THREE    GRINT.OS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

sets  forth  again.  We  were  accompanied  out  of 
San  Pedro  Sula  by  the  consular  agent,  the  able 
American  manager  of  the  thirty-seven  miles 
of  railroad,  an'd  his  youthful  baggage-master,  a 
young  gentleman  whom  I  had  formerly  known 
in  the  States. 

Our  escort  left  us  at  the  end  of  a  few  miles, 
at  the  foot  of  the  mountains,  and  we  began  the 
ascent  alone.  From  that  time  on  until  we 
reached  the  Pacific  Ocean  we  moved  at  the  rate 
of  three  miles  an  hour,  or  some  nine  leagues  a 
day,  as  distances  are  measured  in  Honduras,  ten 
hours  being  a  day's  journey.  Our  mules  were 
not  at  all  the  animals  that  we  know  as  mules  in 
the  States,  but  rather  overgrown  donkeys  or 
burros,  and  not  much  stouter  than  those  in  the 
streets  of  Cairo,  whether  it  be  the  Street  in 
Cairo  of  Chicago,  or  the  one  that  runs  in  front 
of  Shepheard's  Hotel.  They  were  patient,  plucky, 
and  wonderfully  sure-footed  little  creatures,  and 
so  careful  of  their  own  legs  and  necks  that,  after 
the  first  few  hours,  we  ceased  to  feel  any  anxiety 
about  our  own,  and  left  the  entire  charge  of  the 
matter  to  them. 

I  think  we  were  all  a  little  startled  at  sight  of 
the  trail  we  were  expected  to  follow,  but  if  we 
were  we  did  not  say  so — at  least,  not  before  Jeffs. 
It  led  almost  directly  up  the  face  of  the  moun- 
tain, along  little  ledges  and  pathways  cut  in 
the  solid  rock,  and  at  times  was  so  slightly 


iN    HONDURAS  73 

marked  that  we  could  not  see  it  five  yards  ahead 
of  us.  On  that  first  day,  during  which  the  trail 
was  always  leading  upward,  the  mules  did  not 
once  put  down  any  one  of  their  four  little  feet 
withe  at  first  testing  the  spot  upon  which  it  was 
to  rest.  This  made  our  progress  slow,  but  it 
gave  one  a  sense  of  security,  which  the  angle 
and  attitude  of  the  body  of  the  man  in  front 
did  much  to  dissipate.  I  do  not  know  the 
name  of  the  mountains  over  which  we  passed, 
nor  do  I  know  the  name  of  any  mountain  in 
Honduras,  except  those  which  we  named  our- 
selves, for  the  reason  that  there  is  not  much  in 
Honduras  except  mountains,  and  it  would  be  as 
difficult  to  give  a  name  to  each  of  her  many 
peaks  as  to  christen  every  town  site  on  a  Western 
prairie.  When  the  greater  part  of  all  the  earth 
of  a  country  stands  on  edge  in  the  air,  it  would 
be  invidious  to  designate  any  one  particular  hill 
or  chain  of  hills.  A  Honduranian  deputy  once 
crumpled  up  a  page  of  letter-paper  in  his  hand 
and  dropped  it  on  the  desk  before  him.  "  That," 
he  said,  "  is  an  outline  map  of  Honduras." 

We  rode  in  single  file,  with  Jeffs  in  front, 
followed  by  Somerset,  with  Griscom  and  myself 
next,  and  Charlwood,  the  best  and  most  faith- 
ful of  servants,  bringing  up  the  rear.  The  pack- 
mules,  as  I  have  said,  were  two  hours  farther 
back,  and  we  could  sometimes  see  them  over 
the  edge  of  a  precipice  crawling  along  a  thou- 


74 


THRKK    C.RWOOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


sand  feet  below  and  behind  us.  It  seemed  an 
unsociable  way  for  friends  to  travel  through  a 
strange  country,  and  I  supposed  that  in  an  hour 

or  so  \ve  would  come 
to  a  broader  trail  and 
pull  up  abreast  and 
exchange  tobacco 
pouches  and  grow 
better  acquainted. 
But  we  never  came 
to  that  broad  trail 
until  we  had  trav- 
elled sixteen  days, 
and  had  left  Tegu- 
cigalpa behind  us, 
and  in  the  fore- 
ground of  all  the 
pictures  I  have  in 
my  mind  of  Hondu- 
ras there  is  always  a 
row  of  men's  backs 
and  shoulders  and 
bobbing  helmets  dis- 
appearing down  a 
slippery  path  of  rock, 
or  rising  above  the 

SOMERSET  ,  c  i.    • 

edge  of  a  mountain 
and  outlined  against 

a  blazing  blue  sky.  We  were  generally  near 
enough  to  one  another  to  talk  if  we  spoke  in 


IN    HONDURAS  75 

a  loud  voice  or  turned  in  the  saddle,  though 
sometimes  we  rode  silently,  and  merely  raised 
an  arm  to  point  at  a  beautiful  valley  below  or 
at  a  strange  bird  on  a  tree,  and  kept  it  rigid 
until  the  man  behind  said,  "  Yes,  I  see,"  when 
it  dropped,  like  a  semaphore  signal  after  the 
train  has  passed. 

Early  in  the  afternoon  of  the  day  of  our  set- 
ting forth  we  saw  for  the  last  time  the  thatched 
roofs  of  San  Pedro  Sula,  like  a  bare  spot  in  the 
great  green  plain  hundreds  of  feet  below  us, 
and  then  we  passed  through  the  clouds  we  had 
watched  from  the  town  itself,  and  bade  the 
eastern  coast  of  Honduras  a  final  farewell. 

The  trail  we  followed  was  so  rough  and  uncer- 
tain that  at  first  I  conceived  a  very  poor  opinion 
of  the  Honduranians  for  not  having  improved  it, 
but  as  we  continued  scrambling  upward  I  ad- 
mired them  for  moving  about  at  all  under  such 
conditions.  After  all,  we  who  had  chosen  to 
take  this  road  through  curiosity  had  certainly  no 
right  to  complain  of  what  was  to  the  natives 
their  only  means  of  communication  with  the  At- 
lantic seaboard.  It  is  interesting  to  think  of  a 
country  absolutely  and  entirely  dependent  on 
such  thoroughfares  for  every  necessity  of  life. 
For  whether  it  be  a  postal  card  or  a  piano,  or  a 
bale  of  cotton,  or  a  box  of  matches,  it  must  be 
brought  to  Tegucigalpa  on  the  back  of  a  mule 
or  on  the  shoulders  of  a  man,  who  must  slip  and 


76  THREE    GRINGOS   IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

slide  and  scramble  either  over  this  trail  or  the 
one  on  the  western  coast. 

Sometimes  this  high-road  of  commerce  was  cut 
through  the  living  rock  in  steps  as  even  and  sharp 
as  those  in  front  of  a  brownstone  house  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  and  so  narrow  that  we  had  to  draw  up 
our  knees  to  keep  them  from  being  scratched 
and  cut  on  the  rough  walls  of  the  passageway, 
and  again  it  led  through  jungle  so  dense  that 
if  one  wandered  three  yards  from  the  trail  he 
could  not  have  found  his  way  back  again  ;  but 
this  danger  was  not  imminent,  as  no  one  could 
go  that  far  from  the  trail  without  having  first 
hacked  and  cut  his  way  there. 

It  was  not  always  so  difficult ;  at  times  we 
came  out  into  bare  open  spaces,  and  rode  up  the 
dry  bed  of  a  mountain  stream,  and  felt  the  full 
force  of  the  sun,  or  again  it  led  along  a  ledge  of 
rock  two  feet  wide  at  the  edge  of  a  precipice,  and 
we  were  fanned  with  cool,  damp  breaths  from  the 
pit  a  thousand  feet  belo\v,  where  the  sun  had 
never  penetrated,  and  where  the  moss  and  fern 
of  centuries  grew  in  a  thick,  dark  tangle. 

We  stopped  for  our  first  meal  at  a  bare  place 
on  the  top  of  a  mountain,  where  there  were  a 
half-dozen  mud  huts.  Jeffs  went  from  one  to 
another  of  these  and  collected  a  few  eggs,  and 
hired  a  woman  to  cook  them  and  to  make  us 
some  coffee.  We  added  tinned  things  and  bread 
to  this  luncheon,  which,  as  there  were  no  benches, 


A   DRAWER   OK   WATER 


IN    HONDURAS  79 

we  ate  seated  on  the  ground,  kicking  at  the  dogs 
and  pigs  and  chickens,  that  snatched  in  a  most 
familiar  manner  at  the  food  in  our  hands.  In 
Honduras  there  are  so  few  hotels  that  travellers 
are  entirely  dependent  for  food  and  for  a  place 
in  which  to  sleep  upon  the  people  who  live  along 
the  trail,  who  are  apparently  quite  hardened  to 
having  their  homes  invaded  by  strangers,  and 
their  larders  levied  upon  at  any  hour  of  the  day 
or  night. 

Even  in  the  larger  towns  and  so-called  cities 
we  slept  in  private  houses,  and  on  the  solitary 
occasion  when  we  were  directed  to  a  hotel  we 
found  a  bare  room  with  a  pile  of  canvas  cots 
heaped  in  one  corner,  to  which  we  were  told  to 
help  ourselves.  There  was  a  real  hotel,  and  a 
very  bad  one,  at  the  capital,  where  we  fared  much 
worse  than  we  had  often  done  in  the  interior ; 
but  with  these  two  exceptions  we  were  depend- 
ent for  shelter  during  our  entire  trip  across  Hon- 
duras upon  the  people  of  the  country.  Some- 
times they  sent  us  to  sleep  in  the  town-hall,  which 
was  a  large  hut  with  a  mud  floor,  and  furnished 
with  a  blackboard  and  a  row  of  benches,  and 
sometimes  with  stocks  for  prisoners  ;  for  it  served 
as  a  school  or  prison  or  hotel,  according  to  the 
needs  of  the  occasion. 

We  were  equally  dependent  upon  the  natives 
for  our  food.  We  carried  breakfast  bacon  and 
condensed  milk  and  sardines  and  bread  with  us, 


80      THREE  GRINGOS  IN  CENTRAL  AMERICA 

and  to  these  we  were  generally  able  to  add,  at 
least  once  a  day,  coffee  and  eggs  and  beans.  The 
national  bread  is  the  tortilla.  It  is  made  of  corn- 
meal,  patted  into  the  shape  of  a  buckwheat  cake 
between  the  palms  of  the  hands,  and  then  baked. 
They  were  generally  given  to  us  cold,  in  a  huge 
pile,  and  were  burned  on  both  sides, but  untouched 
by  heat  in  the  centre.  The  coffee  was  always 
excellent,  as  it  should  have  been,  for  the  Hon- 
duranian coffee  is  as  fine  as  any  grown  in  Central 
America,  and  we  never  had  too  much  of  it ;  but 
of  eggs  and  black  beans  there  was  no  end.  The 
black-bean  habit  in  Honduras  is  very  general ; 
they  gave  them  to  us  three  times  a  day,  some- 
times cold  and  sometimes  hot,  sometimes  with 
bacon  and  sometimes  alone.  They  were  fre- 
quently served  to  us  in  the  shape  of  sandwiches 
between  tortillas,  and  again  in  the  form  of  pud- 
ding with  chopped-up  goat's  meat.  At  first,  and 
when  they  were  served  hot,  I  used  to  think  them 
delicious.  That  seems  very  long  ago  now.  When 
I  was  at  Johnstown  at  the  time  of  the  flood,  there 
was  a  soda  cracker,  with  jam  inside,  which  was 
served  out  to  the  correspondents  in  place  of 
bread  ;  and  even  now,  if  it  became  a  question  of 
my  having  to  subsist  on  those  crackers,  and  the 
black  beans  of  Central  America,  or  starve,  I  am 
sure  I  should  starve,  and  by  preference. 

We  were  naturally  embarrassed  at  first  when 
we   walked   into  strange  huts;   but   the  owners 


IN    HONDURAS  8  I 

seemed  to  take  such  invasions  with  apathy  and 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  were  neither  glad  to 
see  us  when  we  came,  nor  relieved  when  we  de- 
parted. They  asked  various  prices  for  what  they 
gave  us  —  about  twice  as  much  as  they  would 
have  asked  a  native  for  the  same  service  ;  at  least, 
so  Jeffs  told  us;  but  as  our  bill  never  amounted 
to  more  than  fifty  cents  apiece  for  supper,  lodg- 
ing, and  a  breakfast  the  next  morning,  they  can- 
not be  said  to  have  robbed  us.  While  the  wom- 
an at  the  first  place  at  which  we  stopped  boiled 
the  eggs,  her  husband  industriously  whittled  a 
lot  of  sharp  little  sticks,  which  he  distributed 
among  us,  and  the  use  of  which  we  could  not 
imagine,  until  we  were  told  we  were  expected 
to  spike  holes  in  the  eggs  with  them,  and  then 
suck  out  the  meat.  We  did  not  make  a  success 
of  this,  and  our  prejudice  against  eating  eggs 
after  that  fashion  was  such  that  we  were  partic- 
ular to  ask  to  have  them  fried  during  the  rest  of 
our  trip.  This  was  the  only  occasion  when  I  saw 
a  Honduranian  husband  help  his  wife  to  work. 

After  our  breakfast  on  the  top  of  the  moun- 
tain, we  began  its  descent  on  the  other  side. 
This  was  much  harder  on  the  mules  than  the 
climbing  had  been,  and  they  stepped  even  more 
slowly,  and  so  gave  us  many  opportunities  to 
look  out  over  the  tops  of  trees  and  observe 
with  some  misgivings  the  efforts  of  the  man  in 
front  to  balance  the  mule  by  lying  flat  on  its 
6 


82  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

hind-quarters.  The  temptation  at  such  times 
to  sit  upright  and  see  into  what  depths  you 
were  going  next  was  very  great.  We  struck  a 
level  trail  about  six  in  the  evening,  and  the  mules 
were  so  delighted  at  this  that  they  started  off  of 
their  own  accord  at  a  gallop,  and  were  further 
encouraged  by  our  calling  them  by  the  names  of 
different  Spanish  generals.  This  inspired  them 
to  such  a  degree  that  we  had  to  change  their 
names  to  Bob  Ingersoll  or  Senator  Hill,  or  oth- 
ers to  the  same  effect,  at  which  they  grew  dis- 
couraged and  drooped  perceptibly. 

We  slept  that  night  at  a  ranch  called  La  Pieta, 
belonging  to  Dr.  Miguel  Pazo,  where  we  experi- 
mented for  the  first  time  with  our  hammocks, 
and  tried  to  grow  accustomed  to  going  to  bed 
under  the  eyes  of  a  large  household  of  Indian 
maidens,  mosos,  and  cowboys.  There  are  men 
who  will  tell  you  that  they  like  to  sleep  in  a 
hammock,  just  as  there  are  men  who  will  tell 
you  that  they  like  the  sea  best  when  it  is  rough, 
and  that  they  arc  happiest  when  the  ship  is 
throwing  them  against  the  sides  and  superstruct- 
ure, and  when  they  cannot  sit  still  without  brac- 
ing their  legs  against  tables  and  stanchions.  I 
always  want  to  ask  such  men  if  they  would  pre- 
fer land  in  a  state  of  perpetual  earthquake,  or  in 
its  normal  condition  of  steadiness,  and  I  have  al- 
ways been  delighted  to  hear  sea-captains  declare 
themselves  best  pleased  with  a  level  keel,  and  the 


IN    HONDURAS  83 

chance  it  gives  them  to  go  about  their  work  with- 
out having  to  hang  on  to  hand-rails.  And  I  had 
a  feeling  of  equal  satisfaction  when  I  saw  as  many 
sailors  as  could  find  room  sleeping  on  the  hard 
deck  of  a  man-of-war  at  Colon,  in  preference  to 
suspending  themselves  in  hammocks,  which  were 
swinging  empty  over  their  heads.  The  ham- 
mock keeps  a  man  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  de- 
grees, with  the  weight  of  both  his  legs  and  his 
body  on  the  base  of  the  spinal  column,  which 
gets  no  rest  in  consequence. 

The  hammock  is,  however,  almost  universally 
used  in  Honduras,  and  is  a  necessity  there  on  ac- 
count of  the  insects  and  ants  and  other  beasts 
that  climb  up  the  legs  of  cots  and  inhabit  the 
land.  But  the  cots  of  bull -hide  stretched  on 
ropes  are,  in  spite  of  the  insects,  greatly  to  be 
preferred ;  they  are  at  least  flat,  and  one  can  lie 
on  them  without  having  his  legs  three  feet  higher 
than  his  head.  Their  manufacture  is  very  sim- 
ple. When  a  steer  is  killed  its  hide  is  pegged 
out  on  the  ground,  and  left  where  the  dogs  can 
eat  what  flesh  still  adheres  to  it ;  and  when  it 
has  been  cleaned  after  this  fashion  and  the  sun 
has  dried  it,  ropes  of  rawhide  are  run  through 
its  edges,  and  it  is  bound  to  a  wooden  frame 
with  the  hairy  side  up.  It  makes  a  cool,  hard 
bed.  In  the  poorer  huts  the  hides  are  given  to 
the  children  at  night,  and  spread  directly  on  the 
earth  floor.  During  the  day  the  same  hides  are 


84  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

used  to  hold  the  coffee,  which  is  piled  high  upon 
them  and  placed  in  the  sun  to  dry. 

We  left  La  Pieta  early  the  next  morning,  in 
the  bright  sunlight,  but  instead  of  climbing  labo- 
riously into  the  sombre  mountains  of  the  day 
before,  we  trotted  briskly  along  a  level  path  be- 
tween sunny  fields  and  delicate  plants,  and  trees 
with  a  pale-green  foliage,  and  covered  with  the 
most  beautiful  white-and-purple  flowers.  There 
were  hundreds  of  doves  in  the  air,  and  in  the 
bushes  many  birds  of  brilliant  blue-and-black  or 
orange-and-scarlet  plumage,  and  one  of  more  so- 
ber colors  with  two  long  white  tail-feathers  and  a 
white  crest,  like  a  macaw  that  had  turned  Quaker. 
None  of  these  showed  the  least  inclination  to 
disturb  himself  as  we  approached.  An  hour  af- 
ter our  setting  forth  we  plunged  into  a  forest  of 
manacca-palms,  through  which  we  rode  the  rest 
of  the  morning.  This  was  the  most  beautiful 
and  wonderful  experience  of  our  journey.  The 
manacca-palm  differs  from  the  cocoanut  or  royal 
palm  in  that  its  branches  seem  to  rise  directly 
from  the  earth,  and  not  to  sprout,  as  do  the  oth- 
ers, from  the  top  of  a  tall  trunk.  Each  branch 
has  a  single  stem,  and  the  leaf  spreads  and  falls 
from  cither  side  of  this,  cut  into  even  blades, 
like  a  giant  fern. 

There  is  a  plant  that  looks  like  the  manacca- 
palm  at  home  which  you  see  in  flower-pots  in  the 
corners  of  drawing-rooms  at  weddings,  and  conse- 


IN    HONDURAS  87 

quently  when  we  saw  the  real  manacca-palm  the 
effect  was  curious.  It  did  not  seem  as  though 
they  were  monster  specimens  of  these  little  plants 
in  the  States,  but  as  though  we  had  grown  small- 
er. We  felt  dwarfed,  as  though  we  had  come 
across  a  rose-bush  as  large  as  a  tree.  The  branch- 
es of  these  palms  were  sixty  feet  high,  and  occa- 
sionally six  feet  broad,  and  bent  and  swayed  and 
interlaced  in  the  most  graceful  and  exquisite  con- 
fusion. Every  blade  trembled  in  the  air,  and  for 
hours  we  heard  no  other  sound  save  their  perpet- 
ual murmur  and  rustle.  Not  even  the  hoofs  of 
our  mules  gave  a  sound,  for  they  trod  on  the  dead 
leaves  of  centuries.  The  palms  made  a  natural 
archway  for  us,  and  the  leaves  hung  like  a  por- 
tiere across  the  path,  and  you  would  see  the  man 
riding  in  front  raise  his  arm  and  push  the  long 
blades  to  either  side,  and  disappear  as  they  fell 
again  into  place  behind  him.  It  was  like  a  scene 
on  the  tropical  island  of  a  pantomime,  where  ev- 
ery thing  is  exaggerated  both  in  size  and  in  beau- 
ty. It  made  you  think  of  a  giant  aquarium  or 
conservatory  which  had  been  long  neglected. 

At  every  hundred  yards  or  so  there  were 
giant  trees  with  smooth  gray  trunks,  as  even  and 
regular  as  marble,  and  with  roots  like  flying-but- 
tresses, a  foot  in  thickness,  and  reaching  from 
ten  to  fifteen  feet  up  from  the  ground.  If  these 
flanges  had  been  covered  over,  a  man  on  mule- 
back  could  have  taken  refuge  between  them. 


88  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

Some  of  the  trunks  of  these  trees  were  covered 
with  intricate  lace -work  of  a  parasite  which 
twisted  in  and  out,  and  which  looked  as  though 
thousands  of  snakes  were  crawling  over  the 
white  surface  of  the  tree  ;  they  were  so  much 
like  snakes  that  one  passed  beneath  them  with 
an  uneasy  shrug.  Hundreds  of  orchids  clung  to 
the  branches  of  the  trees,  and  from  these  stouter 
limbs  to  the  more  pliable  branches  of  the  palms 
below  white- faced  monkeys  sprang  and  swung 
from  tree  to  tree,  running  along  the  branches 
until  they  bent  with  the  weight  like  a  trout-rod, 
and  sprang  upright  again  with  a  sweep  and  rush 
as  the  monkeys  leaped  off  chattering  into  the 
depths  of  the  forest.  We  rode  through  this 
enchanted  wilderness  of  wavering  sunlight  and 
damp,  green  shadows  for  the  greater  part  of  the 
day,  and  came  out  finally  into  a  broad,  open 
plain,  cut  up  by  little  bubbling  streams,  flashing 
brilliantly  in  the  sun.  It  was  like  an  awakening 
from  a  strange  and  beautiful  nightmare. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  afternoon  we  arrived 
at  another  one  of  the  farm-houses  belonging  to 
young  Dr.  Pa/,o,  and  at  which  he  and  his  brother 
happened  to  be  stopping.  We  had  ridden  out 
of  our  way  there  in  the  hopes  of  obtaining  a  few 
days'  shooting,  and  the  place  seemed  to  promise 
much  sport.  The  Chamdicon  River,  filled  with 
fish  and  alligators,  ran  within  fifty  yards  of  the 
house ;  and  great  forests,  in  which  there  were 


IN   A   CENTRAL- AMERICAN   FOREST 


IN    HONDURAS  9! 

bear  and  deer  and  wild-pig,  stretched  around  it 
and  beyond  it  on  every  side.  The  house  itself 
was  like  almost  every  other  native  hut  in  Hon- 
duras. They  are  all  built  very  much  alike,  with 
no  attempt  at  ornamentation  within,  or  land- 
scape-gardening without,  although  nature  has 
furnished  the  most  beautiful  of  plants  and  trees 
close  on  every  side  for  just  such  a  purpose.  The 
walls  of  a  Honduranian  hut  are  made  of  mud 
packed  round  a  skeleton  of  interwoven  rods ; 
the  floor  is  of  the  naked  earth,  and  the  roof  is 
thatched  with  the  branches  of  palms.  After  the 
house  is  finished,  all  of  the  green  stuff  growing 
around  and  about  it  is  cleared  away  for  fifty 
yards  or  so,  leaving  an  open  place  of  bare  and 
barren  mud.  This  is  not  decorative,  but  it  helps 
in  some  measure  to  keep  the  insects  which  cling 
to  every  green  thing  away  from  the  house.  A 
kitchen  of  similarly  interlaced  rods  and  twigs, 
but  without  the  clay,  and  covered  with  just  such 
layers  of  palm  leaves,  stands  on  the  bare  place 
near  the  house,  or  leans  against  one  side  of  it. 
This  is  where  the  tortillas  are  patted  and  baked, 
and  the  rice  and  beans  are  boiled,  and  the  raw 
meat  of  an  occasional  goat  or  pig  is  hung  to 
dry  and  smoke  over  the  fire.  The  oven  in  the 
kitchen  is  made  of  baked  clay,  and  you  seldom 
see  any  cooking  utensils  or  dishes  that  have 
not  been  manufactured  from  the  trees  near  the 
house  or  the  earth  beneath  it.  The  water  for 


92  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

drinking  and  cooking  is  kept  in  round  jars  of  red 
clay,  which  stand  in  rings  of  twisted  twigs  to 
keep  them  upright,  and  the  drinking-vessels  are 
the  halves  of  gourds,  and  the  ladles  are  whole 
gourds,  with  the  branch  on  which  they  grew  still 
adhering  to  them,  to  serve  as  a  handle. 

The  furnishing  of  the  house  shows  the  same 
dependence  upon  nature;  the  beds  arc  either  grass 
hammocks  or  the  rawhide  that  1  have  described, 
and  there  arc  no  chairs  and  few  benches,  the  peo- 
ple preferring  apparently  to  eat  sitting  on  their 
haunches  to  taking  the  trouble  necessary  to 
make  a  chair.  Everything  they  eat,  of  which 
there  is  very  little  variety,  grows  just  beyond 
the  cleared  place  around  the  hut,  and  can  be 
had  at  the  cost  of  the  little  energy  necessary  to 
bring  it  in-doors.  When  a  kid  or  a  pig  or  a 
steer  is  killed,  the  owner  goes  out  to  the  near- 
est peak  and  blows  a  blast  on  a  cow's  horn, 
and  those  within  hearing  who  wish  fresh  meat 
hurry  across  the  mountain  to  purchase  it.  As 
there  is  no  ice  from  one  end  of  Honduras  to  the 
other,  meat  has  to  be  eaten  the  day  it  is  killed. 

This  is  not  the  life  of  the  Honduranians  who 
live  in  the  large  towns  or  so-called  cities,  where 
there  are  varying  approaches  to  the  comfort  of 
civili/.ed  countries,  but  of  the  country  people 
with  whom  we  had  chiefly  to  do.  It  is  as  near 
an  approach  to  the  condition  of  primitive  man 
as  one  can  find  on  this  continent. 


IN    HONDURAS  93 

But  bare  and  poor  as  are  the  houses,  which  are 
bare  not  because  the  people  are  poor,  but  because 
they  are  indolent,  there  is  almost  invariably  some 
corner  of  the  hut  set  aside  and  ornamented  as  an 
altar,  or  some  part  of  the  wall  covered  with  pict- 
ures of  a  religious  meaning.  When  they  have  no 
table,  the  people  use  a  shelf  or  the  stump  of  a 
tree  upon  which  to  place  emblematic  figures, 
which  are  almost  always  china  dolls,  with  no 
original  religious  significance,  but  which  they 
have  dressed  in  little  scraps  of  tinsel  and  silk, 
and  which  they  have  surrounded  with  sardine- 
tins  and  empty  bottles  and  pictures  from  the 
lids  of  cigar- boxes.  Everything  that  has  color 
is  cherished,  and  every  traveller  who  passes  adds 
unconsciously  to  their  stock  of  ornaments  in  the 
wrappings  of  the  boxes  which  he  casts  away  be- 
hind him.  Sometimes  the  pictures  they  use  for 
ornamentation  are  not  half  so  odd  as  the  fact 
that  they  ever  should  have  reached  such  a  wil- 
derness. We  were  frequently  startled  by  the 
sight  of  colored  lithographs  of  theatrical  stars, 
advertising  the  fact  that  they  were  playing  under 
the  direction  of  such  and  such  a  manager,  and 
patent- medicine  advertisements  and  wood- cuts 
from  illustrated  papers,  some  of  them  twenty 
and  thirty  years  old,  which  were  pinned  to  the 
mud  walls  and  reverenced  as  gravely  as  though 
they  had  been  pictures  of  the  Holy  Family  by  a 
Raphael  or  a  Murillo. 


94  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

In  one  hut  we  found  a  life-size  colored  litho- 
graph of  a  woman  whom,  it  so  happened,  we  all 
knew,  which  was  being  used  to  advertise  a  sewing- 
machine.  We  were  so  pleased  at  meeting  a  fa- 
miliar face  so  far  from  home  that  we  bowed  to 
it  very  politely,  and  took  off  our  hats,  at  which 
the  woman  of  the  house,  mistaking  our  deference, 
placed  it  over  the  altar,  fearing  that  she  had  been 
entertaining  an  angel  unawares. 

The  house  of  Dr.  Pazo,  where  we  were  most 
hospitably  entertained,  was  similar  to  those  that 
I  have  described.  It  was  not  his  home,  but 
what  we  would  call  a  hunting-box  or  a  ranch. 
While  we  were  at  luncheon  he  told  a  boy  to  see 
if  there  were  any  alligators  in  sight,  in  exactly 
the  same  tone  with  which  he  might  have  told  a 
servant  to  find  out  if  the  lawn-tennis  net  were  in 
place.  The  boy  returned  to  say  that  there  were 
five  within  a  hundred  yards  of  the  house.  So, 
after  we  had  as  usual  patiently  waited  for  Griscom 
to  finish  his  coffee,  we  went  out  on  the  bank  and 
fired  at  the  unhappy  alligators  for  the  remainder 
of  the  afternoon.  It  did  not  seem  to  hurt  them 
very  much,  and  certainly  did  us  a  great  deal  of 
good.  To  kill  an  alligator  it  is  necessary  to  hit 
it  back  of  the  fore -leg,  or  to  break  its  spine 
where  it  joins  the  tail ;  and  as  it  floats  with  only 
its  eyes  and  a  half-inch  of  its  nose  exposed,  it  is 
difficult  to  reach  either  of  these  vital  spots. 
When  the  alligator  is  on  a  bank,  and  you  at- 


IN    HONDURAS  95 

tempt  to  crawl  up  on  it  along  the  opposite  bank, 
the  birds  make  such  a  noise,  either  on  its  ac- 
count or  on  their  own,  that  it  takes  alarm,  and 
rolls  over  into  the  water  with  an  abruptness  you 
would  hardly  expect  from  so  large  a  body. 

On  our  second  day  at  Dr.  Pazo's  ranch  we 
divided  into  two  parties,  and  scoured  the  wilder- 
ness for  ten  miles  around  after  game.  One  party 
was  armed  with  shot- guns,  and  brought  back 
macaws  of  wonderful  plumage,  wild  turkeys,  and 
quail  in  abundance ;  the  others,  scorning  any- 
thing but  big  game,  carried  rifles,  and,  as  a  re- 
sult, returned  as  they  set  forth,  only  with  fewer 
cartridges.  It  was  most  unfortunate  that  the 
only  thing  worth  shooting  came  to  me.  It  was 
a  wild-cat  with  a  long  tail,  who  patiently  waited 
for  us  in  an  open  place  with  a  calm  and  curious 
expression  of  countenance.  I  think  I  was  more 
surprised  than  he  was,  and  even  after  I  had 
thrown  up  the  ground  under  his  white  belly  he 
stopped  and  turned  again  to  look  at  me  in  a 
hurt  and  reproachful  manner  before  he  bounded 
gracefully  out  of  sight  into  the  underbrush.  We 
also  saw  a  small  bear,  but  he  escaped  in  the 
same  manner,  without  waiting  to  be  fired  upon, 
and  as  we  had  no  dogs  to  send  after  him,  we 
gave  up  looking  for  more,  and  went  back  to  pot 
at  alligators.  There  were  some  excellent  hunt- 
ing-dogs on  the  ranch,  but  the  Pazo  brothers 
had  killed  a  steer  the  night  we  arrived,  and  had 


96  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

given  most  of  it  to  the  dogs,  so  that  in  the 
morning  they  were  naturally  in  no  mood  for 
hunting. 

There  was  an  old  grandfather  of  an  alligator 
whom  Somerset  and  I  had  repeatedly  disturbed 
in  his  slumbers.  He  liked  to  take  his  siestas  on 
a  little  island  entirely  surrounded  by  rapids,  and 
we  used  to  shoot  at  him  from  the  opposite  bank 
of  the  river.  He  was  about  thirteen  feet  long, 
and  the  agility  with  which  he  would  flop  over 
into  the  calm  little  bay,  which  stretched  out  from 
the  point  on  which  he  slept,  was  as  remarkable 
as  it  was  disappointing.  He  was  still  asleep  at 
his  old  stand  when  we  returned  from  our  unsuc- 
cessful shooting  tour,  so  we  decided  to  swim  the 
rapids  and  crawl  up  on  him  across  his  little  island 
and  attack  him  from  the  flank  and  rear.  It  re- 
minded me  somewhat  of  the  taking  of  Lungten- 
pen  on  a  small  scale.  On  that  occasion,  if  I 
remember  correctly,  the  raw  recruits  were  uni- 
formed only  in  Martinis  and  cartridge-belts ;  but 
we  decided  to  carry  our  boots  as  well,  because 
the  alligator's  island  was  covered  with  sharp 
stones  and  briers,  and  the  sand  was  very  hot,  and, 
moreover,  we  had  but  vague  ideas  about  the  cus- 
toms of  alligators,  and  were  not  sure  as  to 
whether  he  might  not  chase  us.  We  thought 
we  would  look  very  silly  running  around  a  little- 
island  pursued  by  a  long  crocodile  and  treading 
on  sharp  hot  stones  in  our  bare  feet. 


IN    HONDURAS  99 

So  each  of  us  took  his  boots  in  one  hand  and 
a  repeating-rifle  in  the  other,  and  with  his  money- 
belt  firmly  wrapped  around  his  neck,  plunged 
into  the  rapids  and  started  to  ford  the  river. 
They  were  exceedingly  swift  rapids,  and  made  you 
feel  as  though  you  were  swinging  round  a  sharp 
corner  on  a  cable-car  with  no  strap  by  which  to 
take  hold.  The  only  times  I  could  stop  at  all 
was  when  I  jammed  my  feet  in  between  two 
stones  at  the  bed  of  the  river,  and  was  so  held 
in  a  vise,  while  the  rest  of  my  body  swayed 
about  in  the  current  and  my  boots  scooped  up 
the  water.  When  I  wanted  to  go  farther  I 
would  stick  my  toes  between  two  more  rocks, 
and  so  gradually  worked  my  way  across,  but  I 
could  see  nothing  of  Somerset,  and  decided  that 
he  had  been  drowned,  and  went  off  to  avenge 
him  on  the  alligator.  It  took  me  some  time  to 
get  my  bruised  and  bleeding  toes  into  the  wet 
boots,  during  which  time  I  kept  continually  look- 
ing over  my  shoulder  to  see  if  the  alligator  were 
going  to  make  a  land  attack,  and  surprise  me 
instead  of  my  surprising  him.  I  knew  he  was 
very  near  me,  for  the  island  smelled  as  strongly  of 
musk  as  a  cigar-shop  smells  of  tobacco ;  but  when 
I  crawled  up  on  him  he  was  still  on  his  point  of 
sand,  and  sound  asleep.  I  had  a  very  good 
chance  at  seventy  yards,  but  I  was  greedy,  and 
wanted  to  come  closer,  and  as  I  was  crawling 
along,  gathering  thorns  and  briers  by  the  way,  I 


IOO  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

startled  about  fifty  birds,  and  the  alligator  flopped 
over  again,  and  left  nothing  behind  him  but  a 
few  tracks  on  the  land  and  a  muddy  streak  in 
the  water.  It  was  a  great  deal  of  trouble  for  a 
very  little  of  alligator;  but  I  was  more  or  less 
consoled  on  my  return  to  find  that  Somerset 
was  still  alive,  and  seated  on  the  same  bank  from 
which  we  had  both  started,  though  at  a  point 
fifty  yards  farther  down-stream.  He  was  en- 
gaged in  counting  out  clamp  Bank- of  -  England 
notes  on  his  bare  knee,  and  blowing  occasional 
blasts  down  the  barrel  of  his  rifle,  which  had 
dragged  him  and  itself  to  the  bottom  of  the 
river  before  the  current  tossed  them  both  back 
on  the  shore. 

The  two  days  of  rest  at  the  ranch  of  Dr.  Pazo 
had  an  enervating  effect  upon  our  mules,  and 
they  moved  along  so  slowly  on  the  day  following 
that  we  had  to  feel  our  way  through  the  night 
for  several  hours  before  we  came  to  the  hut 
where  we  were  to  sleep.  Griscom  and  I  had  lost 
ourselves  on  the  mountain-side,  and  did  not  over- 
take the  others  until  long  after  they  had  settled 
themselves  in  the  compound.  They  had  been 
too  tired  when  they  reached  it  to  do  anything 
more  after  falling  off  their  mules,  and  we  found 
them  stretched  on  the  ground  in  the  light  of  a 
couple  of  fluttering  pine  torches,  with  cameras 
and  saddle-bags  and  carbines  scattered  recklessly 
about,  and  the  mules  walking  over  them  in  the 


IN    HONDURAS  103' 

darkness.  A  fire  in  the  oven  shone  through  the 
chinks  in  the  kitchen  wall,  and  showed  the 
woman  of  the  house  stirring  something  in  a  cal- 
dron with  one  hand  and  holding  her  sleeping 
child  on  her  hip  with  the  other,  while  the  daugh- 
ters moved  in  and  out  of  the  shadow,  carrying 
jars  on  their  heads  and  bundles  of  fodder  for  the 
animals.  It  looked  like  a  gypsy  encampment. 
We  sent  Emilio  back  with  a  bunch  of  pine  torches 
to  find  the  pack-mules,  and  we  could  see  his 
lighted  torch  blazing  far  up  the  trail  that  we  had 
just  descended,  and  lighting  the  rocks  and  trees 
on  either  side  of  him. 

There  was  only  room  for  one  of  us  to  sleep  in- 
side the  hut  that  night,  and  as  Griscom  had  a 
cold,  that  privilege  was  given  to  him  ;  but  it 
availed  him  little,  for  when  he  seated  himself  on 
the  edge  of  the  bull-hide  cot  and  began  to  pull 
off  his  boots,  five  ghostly  feminine  figures  sat  up- 
right in  their  hammocks  and  studied  his  prep- 
arations with  the  most  innocent  but  embarrass- 
ing curiosity.  So,  after  waiting  some  little  time 
for  them  to  go  to  sleep  again,  he  gave  up  any 
thought  of  making  himself  more  comfortable, 
and  slept  in  his  boots  and  spurs. 

We  passed  through  the  pretty  village  of  Trini- 
dad early  the  next  morning,  and  arrived  at  night- 
fall at  the  larger  town  of  Santa  Barbara,  where 
the  sound  of  our  mules'  hoofs  pattering  over  the 
paved  streets  and  the  smell  of  smoking  street 


104  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

lamps  came  to  us  with  as  much  of  a  shock  as 
docs  the  sight  of  land  after  a  week  at  sea.  Santa 
Barbara,  in  spite  of  its  pavements,  was  not  a 
great  metropolis,  and,  owing  to  its  isolation,  the 
advent  of  five  strangers  was  so  much  of  an  event 
that  the  children  of  the  town  followed  us,  cheer- 
ing and  jeering  as  though  we  were  a  circus  pro- 
cession ;  they  blocked  the  house  in  which  we 
took  refuge,  on  every  side,  so  that  the  native 
policemen  had  to  be  stationed  at  our  windows 
to  wave  them  away.  On  the  following  morning 
we  called  to  pay  our  respects  on  General  Louis 
Bogran,  who  has  been  President  of  Honduras 
for  eight  years  and  an  exile  for  two.  He  died 
a  few  months  after  our  visit.  He  was  a  very 
handsome  man,  with  a  fine  presence,  and  with 
great  dignity  of  manner,  and  he  gave  us  an 
audience  exactly  as  though  he  were  a  de- 
throned monarch  and  we  loyal  subjects  come 
to  pay  him  homage  in  his  loneliness.  I  asked 
him  what  he  regarded  as  the  best  work  of  his 
administration,  and  after  thinking  awhile  he 
answered,  "  Peace  for  eight  years,"  which  was 
rather  happy,  when  you  consider  that  in  the 
three  years  since  he  had  left  office  there  have 
been  four  presidents  and  two  long  and  serious 
revolutions,  and  when  we  were  in  the  capital  the 
people  seemed  to  think  it  was  about  time  to 
begin  on  another. 

We   left   Santa  Barbara  early  the  next  morn- 


IN    HONDURAS  105 

ing,  and  rode  over  a  few  more  mountains  to  the 
town  of  Seguaca,  where  the  village  priest  was 
holding  a  festival,  and  where  the  natives  for 
many  miles  around  had  gathered  in  consequence. 


GENERAL   LOUIS   BOGRAN 


There  did  not  seem  to  be  much  of  interest 
going  on  when  we  arrived,  for  the  people  of  the 
town  and  the  visitors  within  her  gates  deserted 
the  booths  and  followed  us  in  a  long  procession 


106  THRKK    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

down   the  single  street,  and  invaded  the  house 
where  we  lunched. 

Our  host  on  this  occasion  set  a  table  for  us  in 
the  centre  of  his  largest  room,  and  the  popula- 
tion moved  in  through  the  doors  and  windows, 
and  seated  themselves  cross-legged  in  rows  ten 
and  fifteen  deep  on  the  earth  floor  at  our  feet, 
and  regarded  us  gravely  and  in  absolute  silence. 
Those  who  could  not  find  standing-room  inside 
stood  on  the  window-sills  and  blocked  the  door- 
ways, and  the  women  were  given  places  of 
honor  on  tables  and  beds.  It  was  somewhat 
embarrassing,  and  we  felt  as  though  we  ought  to 
offer  something  more  unusual  than  the  mere 
exercise  of  eating  in  order  to  justify  such  in- 
terest ;  so  we  attempted  various  parlor  tricks, 
without  appearing  to  notice  the  presence  of  an 
audience,  and  pretended  to  swallotv  the  eggs 
whole,  and  made  knives  and  forks  disappear  in 
the  air,  and  drew  silver  dollars  from  the  legs  of 
the  table,  continuing  our  luncheon  in  the  mean- 
time in  a  self-possessed  and  polite  manner,  as 
though  such  eccentricities  were  our  hourly  habit. 
We  could  see  the  audience,  out  of  the  corner  of 
our  eyes,  leaning  forward  with  their  eyes  and 
mouths  wide  open,  and  were  so  encouraged  that 
we  called  up  some  of  the  boys  and  drew  watches 
and  dollars  out  of  their  heads,  after  which  they 
retired  into  corners  and  ransacked  their  scantily 
clad  persons  for  more.  It  was  rather  an  ex- 


IN    HONDURAS  109 

pensive  exhibition,  for  when  we  set  forth  again 
they  all  laid  claim  to  the  dollars  of  which  they 
considered  they  had  been  robbed. 

The  men  of  the  place,  according  to  their 
courteous  custom,  followed  us  out  of  the  town 
for  a  few  miles,  and  then  we  all  shook  hands  and 
exchanged  cigars  and  cigarettes,  and  separated 
with  many  compliments  and  expressions  of  high 
esteem. 

The  trail  from  Seguaca  to  our  next  resting-place 
led  through  pine  forests  and  over  layers  of  pine- 
needles  that  had  been  accumulating  for  years. 
It  was  a  very  warm,  dry  afternoon,  and  the  air 
was  filled  with  the  odor  of  the  pines,  and  when 
we  came  to  one  of  the  many  mountain  streams 
we  disobeyed  Jeffs  and  stopped  to  bathe  in  it, 
and  let  it  carry  us  down  the  side  of  the  moun- 
tain with  the  speed  of  a  toboggan.  We  had 
been  told  that  bathing  at  any  time  was  extreme- 
ly dangerous  in  Honduras,  and  especially  so 
in  the  afternoon  ;  but  we  always  bathed  in  the 
afternoon,  and  looked  forward  to  the  half-hour 
spent  in  one  of  these  roaring  rapids  as  the  best 
part  of  the  day.  Of  all  our  recollections"  of 
Honduras,  they  are  certainly  the  pleasantest. 
The  water  was  almost  icily  cold,  and  fell  with 
a  rush  and  a  heavy  downpour  in  little  water- 
falls, or  between  great  crevices  in  the  solid 
rocks,  leaping  and  bubbling  and  flashing  in  the 
sun,  or  else  sweeping  in  swift  eddies  in  the  com- 


I  10          THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

pass  of  deep,  shadowy  pools.  We  used  to  im- 
prison ourselves  between  two  rocks  and  let  a  fall 
of  water  strike  us  from  the  distance  of  several 
feet  on  our  head  and  shoulders,  or  tear  past  and 
around  us,  so  that  in  five  minutes  the  soreness 
and  stiffness  of  the  day's  ride  were  rubbed  out 
of  us  as  completely  as  though  we  had  been 
massaged  at  a  Turkish  bath,  and  the  fact  that 
we  were  always  bruised  and  black  and  blue  when 
we  came  out  could  not  break  us  of  this  habit. 
It  was  probably  because  we  were  new  to  the 
country  that  we  suffered  no  great  harm  ;  for 
Jeffs,  who  was  an  old  inhabitant,  and  who  had 
joined  us  in  this  particular  stream  for  the  first 
time,  came  out  looking  twenty  years  older,  and 
in  an  hour  his  teeth  were  chattering  with  chills 
or  clinched  with  fever,  and  his  pulse  was  jump- 
ing at  one  hundred  and  three.  We  were  then 
exactly  six  days'  hard  riding  from  any  civilized 
place,  and  though  we  gave  him  quinine  and 
whiskey  and  put  him  into  his  hammock  as  soon 
as  we  reached  a  hut,  the  evening  is  not  a  cheer- 
ful one  to  remember.  It  would  not  have  been 
a  cheerful  evening  under  any  circumstances,  for 
we  shared  the  hut  with  the  largest  and  most 
varied  collection  of  human  beings,  animals,  and 
insects  that  I  have  ever  seen  gathered  into  so 
small  a  place. 

I  took  an  account  of  stock  before  I  turned  in, 
and    found    that    there   were   three   dogs,  eleven 


IN    HONDURAS  III 

cats,  seven  children,  five  men,  not  including  five 
of  us,  three  women,  and  a  dozen  chickens,  all 
sleeping,  or  trying  to  sleep,  in  the  same  room, 
under  the  one  roof.  And  when  I  gave  up  at- 
tempting to  sleep  and  wandered  out  into  the 
night,  I  stepped  on  the  pigs,  and  startled  three 
or  four  calves  that  had  been  sleeping  under  the 
porch  and  that  lunged  up  out  of  the  darkness. 
We  were  always  asking  Jeffs  why  we  slept  in 
such  places,  instead  of  swinging  our  hammocks 
under  the  trees  and  camping  out  decently  and 
in  order,  and  his  answer  was  that  while  there 
were  insects  enough  in-doors,  they  were  virtually 
an  extinct  species  when  compared  to  the  num- 
ber one  would  meet  in  the  open  air. 

I  have  camped  in  our  West,  where  all  you 
need  is  a  blanket  to  lie  upon  and  another  to 
wrap  around  you,  and  a  saddle  for  a  pillow,  and 
where,  with  a  smouldering  fire  at  your  feet,  you 
can  sleep  without  thought  of  insects.  But  there 
is  nothing  green  that  grows  in  Honduras  that  is 
not  saturated  and  alive  with  bugs,  and  all  man- 
ner of  things  that  creep  and  crawl  and  sting  and 
bite.  It  transcends  mere  discomfort ;  it  is  an 
absolute  curse  to  the  country,  and  to  every  one 
in  it,  and  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  write  of  Hon- 
duras without  dwelling  on  the  insects,  as  of  the 
west  coast  of  Africa  without  speaking  of  the 
fever.  You  cannot  sit  on  the  grass  or  on  a  fallen 
tree,  or  walk  under  an  upright  one  or  through 


112  THREE   (1RINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

the  bushes,  without  hundreds  of  some  sort  of 
animal  or  other  attaching  themselves  to  your 
clothing  or  to  your  person.  And  if  you  get 
clown  from  your  mule  to  take  a  shot  at  some- 
thing in  the  bushes  and  walk  but  twenty  feet 
into  them,  you  have  to  be  beaten  with  brushes 
and  rods  when  you  come  out  again  as  vigorously 
as  though  you  were  a  dusty  carpet.  There  will 
be  sometimes  as  many  as  a  hundred  insects 
under  one  leaf ;  and  after  they  have  once  laid 
their  claws  upon  you,  your  life  is  a  mockery, 
and  you  feel  at  night  as  though  you  were  sleep- 
ing in  a  bed  with  red  pepper.  The  mules  have 
even  a  harder  time  of  it ;  for,  as  if  they  did  not 
suffer  enough  in  the  day,  they  are  in  constant 
danger  at  night  from  vampires,  which  fasten 
themselves  to  the  neck  and  suck  out  the  blood, 
leaving  them  so  weak  that  often  when  we  came 
to  saddle  them  in  the  morning  they  would  stag- 
ger and  almost  fall.  Sometimes  the  side  of 
their  head  and  shoulders  would  be  wet  with 
their  own  blood.  I  never  heard  of  a  vampire 
attacking  a  man  in  that  country,  but  the  fact 
that  they  are  in  the  air  does  not  make  one  sleep 
any  the  sounder. 

In  the  morning  after  our  night  with  the  varied 
collection  of  men  and  animals  we  put  back  again 
to  the  direct  trail  to  Tegucigalpa,  from  which 
place  we  were  still  distant  a  seven  days'  ride. 


II 


WE  swung  our  hammocks  on  the  sixth  .night 
out  in  the  municipal  building  of  Tabla  Ve ;  but 
there  was  little  sleep.  Towards  morning  the 
night  turned  bitterly  cold,  and  the  dampness  rose 
from  the  earthen  floor  of  the  hut  like  a  breath 
from  the  open  door  of  a  refrigerator,  and  kept  us 
shivering  in  spite  of  sweaters  and  rubber  blankets. 
Above,  the  moon  and  stars  shone  brilliantly  in  a 
clear  sky,  but  down  in  the  valley  in  which  the 
village  lay,  a  mist  as  thick  as  the  white  smoke 
of  a  locomotive  rose  out  of  the  ground  to  the 
level  of  the  house-tops,  and  hid  Tabla  Ve  as 
completely  as  though  it  were  at  the  bottom  of 
a  lake.  The  dogs  of  the  village  moved  through 
the  mist,  howling  dismally,  and  meeting  to  fight 
with  a  sudden  sharp  tumult  of  yells  that  made 
us  start  up  in  our  hammocks  and  stare  at  each 
other  sleepily,  while  Jeffs  rambled  on,  muttering 
and  moaning  in  his  fever.  It  was  not  a  pleasant 
night,  and  we  rode  up  the  mountain-side  out  of 
the  mist  the  next  morning  unrefreshed,  but  satis- 
fied to  be  once  more  in  the  sunlight.  They  had 
told  us  at  Tabla  Ve  that  there  was  to  be  a  bull- 
baiting  that  same  afternoon  at  the  village  of 


114  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

Seguatepec,  fifteen  miles  over  the  mountain, 
where  a  priest  was  holding  a  church  festival. 
So  we  left  Jeffs  to  push  along  with  the  mozos, 
and  by  riding  as  fast  as  the  mules  could  go,  we 
reached  Seguatepec  by  four  in  the  afternoon. 


A    VIl.l.AGK    IN    THK    INTERIOR 


It  was  a  bright,  clean  town,  sitting  pertly  on 
the  flat  top  of  a  hill  that  fell  away  from  it  evenly 
on  every  side.  It  had  a  little  church  and  a  little 
plaza,  and  the  church  was  so  vastly  superior  to 
every  other  house  in  the  place — as  was  the  case 


IN    HONDURAS  115 

in  every  village  through  which  we  passed — as  to 
make  one  suppose  that  it  had  been  built  by  one 
race  of  people  and  the  houses  by  another.  The 
plaza  was  shut  in  on  two  of  its  sides  by  a  barrier 
seven  rails  high,  held  together  by  ox-hide  ropes. 
This  barrier,  with  the  houses  fronting  the  plaza 
on  its  two  other  sides,  formed  the  arena  in  which 
the  bull  was  to  be  set  at  liberty.  All  of  the 
windows  and  a  few  of  the  doors  of  the  houses 
were  barred,  and  the  open  places  between  were* 
filled  up  by  ramparts  of  logs.  There  was  no 
grand-stand,  but  every  one  contributed  a  bench 
or  a  table  from  his  own  house,  and  the  women 
seated  themselves  on  these,  while  the  men  and 
boys  perched  on  the  upper  rail  of  the  barricade. 
The  occasion  was  a  memorable  one,  and  all  the 
houses  were  hung  with  strips  of  colored  linen, 
and  the  women  wore  their  brilliant  silk  shawls, 
and  a  band  of  fifteen  boys,  none  of  whom  could 
have  been  over  sixteen  years  of  age,  played  a 
weird  overture  to  the  desperate  business  of  the 
afternoon. 

It  was  a  somewhat  primitive  and  informal  bull- 
fight, and  it  began  with  their  lassoing  the  bull 
by  his  horns  and  hoofs,  and  dragging  him  head 
first  against  the  barricade.  With  a  dozen  men 
pulling  on  the  lariat  around  the  horns  from  the 
outside  of  the  ring,  and  two  more  twisting  his 
tail  on  the  inside,  he  was  at  such  an  uncomfort- 
able disadvantage  that  it  was  easy  for  them  to 


Il6  THREE    GRINGOS   IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

harness  him  in  a  net-work  of  lariats,  and  for  a 
bold  rider  to  seat  himself  on  his  back.  The  bold 
rider  wore  spurs  on  his  bare  feet,  and,  with  his 
toes  stuck  in  the  ropes  around  the  bull's  body, 
he  grasped  the  same  ropes  with  one  hand,  and 
with  the  other  hand  behind  him  held  on  to  the 
bull's  tail  as  a  man  holds  the  tiller  of  a  boat. 
When  the  man  felt  himself  firmly  fixed,  and  the 
bull  had  been  poked  into  a  very  bad  temper 
with  spears  and  sharp  sticks,  the  lariat  around 
his  horns  was  cut,  and  he  started  up  and  off  on 
a  frantic  gallop,  bucking  as  vigorously  as  a  Texas 
pony,  and  trying  to  gore  the  man  clinging  to  his 
back  with  backward  tosses  of  his  horns. 

There  was  no  regular  toreador,  and  any  one 
who  desired  to  sacrifice  himself  to  make  a  Sagua- 
tepecan  holiday  was  at  liberty  to  do  so  ;  and  as  a 
half-dozen  men  so  sought  distinction,  and  as  the 
bull  charged  at  anything  on  two  legs,  the  excite- 
ment was  intense.  He  moved  very  quickly  for 
so  huge  an  animal  in  spite  of  his  heavy  handicap, 
and,  with  the  exception  of  one  man  with  a  red 
flag  and  a  spirit  of  daring  not  entirely  due  to 
natural  causes,  no  one  cared  to  go  very  near  him. 
So  he  pawed  up  and  down  the  ring,  tossing  and 
bucking  and  making  himself  as  disagreeable  to 
the  man  on  his  back  as  he  possibly  could.  It 
struck  me  that  it  would  be  a  distinctly  sporting 
act  to  photograph  a  bull  while  he  was  charging 
head  on  at  the  photographer,  and  it  occurred  to 


IN    HONDURAS  117 

Somerset  and  Griscom  at  about  the  same  time 
that  it  would  be  pleasant  to  confront  a  very  mad 
bull  while  he  was  careering  about  with  a  man 
twisting  his  tail.  So  we  all  dropped  into  the 
arena  at  about  the  same  moment,  from  different 
sides,  and  as  we  were  gringos,  our  appearance 
was  hailed  with  laughter  and  yells  of  encourage- 
ment. The  gentleman  on  the  bull  seemed  to  be 
able  to  control  him  more  or  less  by  twisting  his 
tail  to  one  side  or  the  other,  and  as  soon  as  he 
heard  the  shouts  that  welcomed  us  he  endeavored 
to  direct  the  bull's  entire  attention  to  my  two 
young  friends.  Griscom  and  Somerset  are  six 
feet  high,  even  without  riding-boots  and  pith 
helmets,  and  with  them  they  were  so  conspic- 
uous that  the  bull  was  properly  incensed,  and 
made  them  hurl  themselves  over  the  barricade 
in  such  haste  that  they  struck  the  ground  on  the 
other  side  at  about  the  same  instant  that  he 
butted  the  rails,  and  with  about  the  same  amount 
of  force. 

Shrieks  and  yells  of  delight  rose  from  the 
natives  at  this  delightful  spectacle,  and  it  was 
generally  understood  that  we  had  been  engaged 
to  perform  in  our  odd  costumes  for  their  special 
amusement,  and  the  village  priest  attained  gen- 
uine popularity  for  this  novel  feature.  The  bull- 
baiting  continued  for  some  time,  and  as  I  kept 
the  camera  in  my  own  hands,  there  is  no  docu- 
mentary evidence  to  show  that  any  one  ran  ,away 


Il8          THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

but  Griscom  and  Somerset.  Friendly  doors  were 
opened  to  us  by  those  natives  whose  houses 
formed  part  of  the  arena,  and  it  was  amusing  to 
see  the  toreadors  popping  in  and  out  of  them, 
like  the  little  man  and  woman  on  the  barometer 
who  come  out  when  it  rains  and  go  in  when  the 
sun  shines,  and  vice  versa. 

On  those  frequent  occasions  when  the  bull 
charged  the  barricade,  the  entire  Ime  of  men  and 
boys  on  its  topmost  rail  would  go  over  backward, 
and  disappear  completely  until  the  disappointed 
bull  had  charged  madly  off  in  another  direction. 
Once  he  knocked  half  of  a  mud-house  away  in 
his  efforts  to  follow  a  man  through  a  doorway, 
and  again  a  window-sill,  over  which  a  toreador 
had  dived  head  first  like  a  harlequin  in  a  panto- 
mime, caved  in  under  the  force  of  his  attack. 
Fresh  bulls  followed  the  first,  and  the  boy  musi- 
cians maddened  them  still  further  by  the  most 
hideous  noises,  which  only  ceased  when  the  bulls 
charged  the  fence  upon  which  the  musicians  sat, 
and  which  they  vacated  precipitately,  each  tak- 
ing up  the  tune  where  he  had  left  off  when  his 
feet  struck  the  ground.  There  was  a  grand  ball 
that  night,  to  which  we  did  not  go,  but  we  lay 
awake  listening  to  the  fifteen  boy  musicians 
until  two  in  the  morning.  It  was  an  odd,  eyrie 
sort  of  music,  in  which  the  pipings  of  the  reed 
instruments  predominated.  But  it  was  very 
beautiful,  and  very  much  like  the  music  of  the 


IN    HONDURAS  1 19 

Hungarian  gypsies  in  making  little  thrills  chase 
up  and  down  over  one's  nervous  system. 

The  next  morning  Jeffs  had  shaken  off  his 
fever,  and,  once  more  reunited,  we  trotted  on 
over  heavily  wooded  hills,  where  we  found  no 
water  until  late  in  the  afternoon,  when  we  came 
upon  a  broad  stream,  and  surprised  a  number  of 
young  girls  in  bathing,  who  retreated  leisurely  as 
we  came  clattering  down  to  the  ford.  Bathing 
in  mid-stream  is  a  popular  amusement  in  Hon- 
duras, and  is  conducted  without  any  false  sense 
of  modesty  ;  and  judging  from  the  number  of 
times  we  came  upon  women  so  engaged,  it  seems 
to  be  the  chief  occupation  of  their  day. 

That  night  we  slept  in  Comyagua,  the  second 
largest  city  in  the  republic.  It  was  originally 
selected  as  the  site  for  a  capital,  and  situated 
accordingly  at  exactly  even  distances  from  the 
Pacific  Ocean  and  the  Caribbean  Sea.  We  found 
it  a  dull  and  desolate  place  of  many  one-story 
houses,  with  iron-barred  windows,  and  a  great, 
bare,  dusty  plaza,  faced  by  a  huge  cathedral. 
Commerce  seemed  to  have  passed  it  by,  and 
the  sixty  thousand  inhabitants  who  occupied  it 
in  the  days  of  the  Spaniards  have  dwindled  down 
to  ten.  The  place  is  as  completely  cut  off  from 
civilization  as  an  island  in  the  Pacific  Ocean. 
The  plain  upon  which  Comyagua  stands  stretches 
for  many  miles,  and  the  nature  of  the  stones  and 
pebbles  on  its  surface  would  seem  to  show  that 


120  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

it  was  once  the  bottom  of  a  great  lake.  Now  its 
round  pebbles  and  sandy  soil  make  it  a  valley 
of  burning  heat,  into  which  the  sun  beats  with- 
out the  intervening  shadows  of  trees  or  moun- 
tains to  save  the  traveller  from  the  fierceness  of 
its  rays. 

We  rode  over  thirty  miles  of  it,  and  found  that 
part  of  the  plain  which  we  traversed  after  our 
night's  rest  at  the  capital  the  most  trying  ten 
miles  of  our  trip.  We  rode  out  into  it  in  the 
rear  of  a  long  funeral  procession,  in  which  the 
men  and  boys  walked  bareheaded  and  barefooted 
in  the  burning  sand.  They  were  marching  to  a 
burial-ground  out  in  the  plain,  and  they  were 
carrying  the  coffin  on  their  shoulders,  and  bear- 
ing before  it  a  life-sized  figure  of  the  Virgin  and 
many  flaring  candles  that  burned  yellow  in  the 
glaring  sunlight. 

From  Comyagua  the  trail  led  for  many  miles 
through  heavy  sand,  in  which  nothing  seemed  to 
grow  but  gigantic  cacti  of  a  sickly  light  green 
that  twisted  themselves  in  jointed  angles  fifteen 
to  twenty  feet  in  the  air  above  us,  and  century- 
plants  with  flowers  of  a  vivid  yellow,  and  tall, 
leafless  bushes  bristling  with  thorns.  The  moun- 
tains lay  on  cither  side,  and  formed  the  valley 
through  which  we  rode,  two  dark-green  barriers 
against  a  blazing  sky,  but  for  miles  before  and 
behind  us  there  was  nothing  to  rest  the  eye  from 
the  glare  of  the  sand.  The  atmosphere  was 


IN    HONDURAS  121 

without  a  particle  of  moisture,  and  the  trail 
quivered  and  swam  in  the  heat ;  if  you  placed 
your  hand  on  the  leather  pommel  of  your  saddle 
it  burned  the  flesh  like  a  plate  of  hot  brass,  and 
ten  minutes  after  we  had  dipped  our  helmets  in 
water  they  were  baked  as  dry  as  when  they  had 
first  come  from  the  shop.  The  rays  of  the  sun 
seemed  to  beat  up  at  you  from  below  as  well 
as  from  above,  and  we  gasped  and  panted  as  we 
rode,  dodging  and  ducking  our  heads  as  though 
the  sun  was  something  alive  and  active  that 
struck  at  us  as  we  passed  by.  If  you  dared  to 
look  up  at  the  sky  its  brilliancy  blinded  you  as 
though  some  one  had  flashed  a  mirror  in  your 
eyes. 

We  lunched  at  a  village  of  ten  huts  planted 
defiantly  in  the  open  plain,  and  as  little  protect- 
ed from  the  sun  as  a  row  of  bricks  in  a  brick- 
yard, but  by  lying  between  two  of  them  we  found 
a  draught  of  hot  air  and  shade,  and  so  rested  for 
an  hour.  Our  trail  after  that  led  over  a  mile  or 
two  of  red  hematite  ore,  which  suggested  a  ride 
in  a  rolling-mill  with  the  roof  taken  away,  and 
with  the  sun  beating  into  the  four  walls,  and  the 
air  filled  with  iron-dust.  Two  hours  later  we 
came  to  a  cafton  of  white  chalk,  in  which  the 
government  had  cut  stepping-places  for  the  hoofs 
of  the  mules.  The  white  glare  in  this  valley  was 
absolutely  blinding,  and  the  atmosphere  was  that 
of  a  lime-kiln.  We  showed  several  colors  after 


122          THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

this  ride,  with  layers  of  sand  and  clay,  and  parti- 
cles of  red  ore  and  powdering  of  white  chalk  over 
all ;  but  by  five  o'clock  we  reached  the  moun- 
tains once  more,  and  found  a  cool  stream  dash- 
ing into  little  water-falls  and  shaded  by  great 
trees,  where  the  air  was  scented  by  the  odor  of 
pine-needles  and  the  damp,  spongy  breath  of 
moss  and  fern. 

We  were  now  within  two  days  of  Tegucigal- 
pa, and  the  sense  of  nearness  to  civilization  and 
the  knowledge  that  the  greater  part  of  our  jour- 
ney was  at  an  end  made  us  forget  the  discom- 
forts and  hardships  which  we  had  endured  with- 
out the  consolation  of  excitement  that  comes 
with  danger,  or  the  comforting  thought  that  we 
were  accomplishing  anything  in  the  meantime. 
We  had  been  complaining  of  this  during  the 
day  to  Jeffs,  and  saying  that  had  we  gone  to  the 
coast  of  East  Africa  we  could  not  have  been 
more  uncomfortable  nor  run  greater  risks  from 
fever,  but  that  there  we  would  have  met  with 
big  game,  and  we  would  have  visited  the  most 
picturesque  instead  of  the  least  interesting  of  all 
countries. 

These  complaints  inspired  Jeffs  to  play  a  trick 
upon  us,  which  was  meant  in  a  kindly  spirit,  and 
by  which  he  intended  to  furnish  us  with  a  mo- 
ment's excitement,  and  to  make  us  believe  that 
we  had  been  in  touch  with  danger.  There  are 
occasional  brigands  in  Central  America,  and  their 


IN    HONDURAS  125 

favorite  hunting-ground  in  Honduras  is  within  a 
few  miles  of  Tegucigalpa,  along  the  trail  from 
the  eastern  coast  over  which  we  were  then  pass- 
ing. We  had  been  warned  of  these  men,  and  it 
occurred  to  Jeffs  that  as  we  complained  of  lack  of 
excitement  in  our  trip,  it  would  be  a  thoughtful 
kindness  to  turn  brigand  and  hold  us  up  upon 
our  march.  So  he  left  us  still  bathing  at  the 
water-fall,  and  telling  us  that  he  would  push  on 
to  engage  quarters  for  the  night,  rode  some  dis- 
tance ahead  and  secreted  himself  behind  a  huge 
rock  on  one  side  of  a  narrow  caflon.  He  first 
placed  his  coat  on  a  bush  beside  him,  and  his 
hat  on  another  bush,  so  as  to  make  it  appear 
that  there  were  several  men  with  him.  His  idea 
was  that  when  he  challenged  us  we  would  see 
the  dim  figures  in  the  moonlight  and  remember 
the  brigands,  and  that  we  were  in  their  stalking- 
ground,  and  get  out  of  their  clutches  as  quickly 
as  possible,  well  satisfied  that  we  had  at  last  met 
with  a  real  adventure. 

We  reached  his  ambuscade  about  seven.  Som- 
erset was  riding  in  advance,  reciting  "  The  Wal- 
rus and  the  Carpenter,"  while  we  were  correcting 
him  when  he  went  wrong,  and  gazing  unconcern- 
edly and  happily  at  the  cool  moonlight  as  it 
came  through  the  trees,  when  we  were  suddenly 
startled  by  a  yell  and  an  order  to  halt,  in  Span- 
ish, and  a  rapid  fusillade  of  pistol-shots.  We 
could  distinguish  nothing  but  what  was  appar- 


126  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

ently  the  figures  of  three  men  crouching  on  the 
hill-side  and  the  flashes  of  their  revolvers,  so  we 
all  fell  off  our  mules  and  began  banging  away  at 
them  with  our  rifles,  while  the  mules  scampered 
off  down  the  mountain.  This  was  not  as  Jeffs 
had  planned  it.  and  he  had  to  rearrange  matters 
very  rapidly.  Bullets  were  cutting  away  twigs 
all  over  the  hill-side  and  splashing  on  the  rock 
behind  which  he  was  now  lying,  and  though  he 
might  have  known  we  could  not  hit  him,  he  was 
afraid  of  a  stray  bullet.  So  he  yelled  at  us  in 
English,  and  called  us  by  name,  until  we  finally 
discovered  we  had  been  grossly  deceived  and  im- 
posed upon,  and  that  our  adventure  was  a  very 
unsatisfactory  practical  joke  for  all  concerned.  It 
took  us  a  long  time  to  round  up  the  mules,  and 
we  reached  our  sleeping- place  in  grim  silence, 
and  with  our  desire  for  danger  still  unsatisfied. 

The  last  leagues  that  separated  us  the  next 
morning  from  Tegucigalpa  seemed,  of  course, 
the  longest  in  the  entire  journey.  And  so  great 
was  our  desire  to  reach  the  capital  before  night- 
fall that  we  left  the  broader  trail  and  scrambled 
down  the  side  of  the  last  mountain,  dragging  our 
mules  after  us,  and  slipping  and  sliding  in  dust  and 
rolling  stones  to  the  tops  of  our  boots.  The  city 
did  not  look  inviting  as  we  viewed  it  from  above. 
It  lay  in  a  bare,  dreary  plain,  surrounded  by  five 
hills  that  rose  straight  into  the  air,  and  that 
seemed  to  have  been  placed  there  for  the  special 


1  \ 


IN    HONDURAS 


129 


purpose  of  revolutionists,  in  order  that  they 
might  the  more  exactly  drop  shot  into  the  town 
at  their  feet.  The  hills  were  bare  of  verdure, 
and  the  landscape  about  the  capital  made  each 


^  -' 


THE   BANK   OF   HONDURAS 

of  us  think  of  the  country  about  Jerusalem.  As 
none  of  us  had  ever  seen  Jerusalem,  we  foregath- 
ered and  argued  why  this  should  be  so,  and  de- 
cided that  it  was  on  account  of  the  round  rocks 
lying  apart  from  one  another,  and  low,  bushy 
trees,  and  the  red  soil,  and  the  flat  roofs  of  the 
houses. 

The  telegraph  wire  which  extends  across  Hon- 
duras, swinging   from    trees    and    piercing   long 
9 


130  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

stretches  of  palm  and  jungle,  had  warned  the 
foreign  residents  of  the  coming  of  Jeffs,  and 
some  of  them  rode  out  to  make  us  welcome. 
Their  greeting,  and  the  sight  of  paved  streets, 
and  the  passing  of  a  band  of  music  and  a  guard 
of  soldiers  in  shoes  and  real  uniform,  seemed  to 
promise  much  entertainment  and  possible  com- 
fort. But  the  hotel  was  a  rude  shock.  We  had 
sent  word  that  we  were  coming,  and  we  had 
looked  forward  eagerly  to  our  first  night  in  a 
level  bed  under  clean  linen;  but  when  we  arrived 
we  were  offered  the  choice  of  a  room  just  vacat- 
ed by  a  very  ill  man,  who  had  left  all  of  his  med- 
icines behind  him,  so  that  the  place  was  unpleas- 
antly suggestive  of  a  hospital,  or  a  very  small 
room,  in  which  there  were  three  cots,  and  a  lay- 
er of  dirt  over  all  so  thick  that  I  wrote  my  name 
with  the  finger  of  my  riding-glove  on  the  centre- 
table.  The  son  of  the  proprietor  saw  this,  and, 
being  a  kindly  person  and  well  disposed,  dipped 
his  arm  in  water  and  proceeded  to  rub  it  over 
the  top  of  the  table,  using  his  sleeve  as  a  wash- 
rag.  So  after  that  we  gave  up  expecting  any- 
thing pleasant,  and  were  in  consequence  delight- 
fully surprised  when  we  came  upon  anything 
that  savored  of  civilization. 

Tegucigalpa  has  an  annex  which  lies  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  river,  and  which  is  to  the 
capital  what  Brooklyn  is  to  New  York.  The 
river  is  not  very  wide  nor  very  deep,  and  its 


IN    HONDURAS  131 

course  is  impeded  by  broad,  flat  rocks.  The 
washer -women  of  the  two  towns  stand  beside 
these  all  day  knee-deep  in  the  eddies  and  beat 
the  stones  with  their  twisted  clubs  of  linen,  so 
that  their  echo  sounds  above  the  roar  of  the 
river  like  the  banging  of  shutters  in  the  wind  or 
the  reports  of  pistols.  This  is  the  only  sugges- 
tion of  energy  that  the  town  furnishes.  The  oth- 
er inhabitants  seem  surfeited  with  leisure  and  ir- 
ritable with  boredom.  There  are  long,  dark,  cool 
shops- of  general  merchandise,  and  a  great  cathe- 
dral and  a  pretty  plaza,  where  the  band  plays  at 
night  and  people  circle  in  two  rings,  one  going 
to  the  right  and  one  going  to  the  left,  and  there 
is  the  government  palace  and  a  big  penitentiary, 
a  university  and  a  cemetery.  But  there  is  no 
color  nor  ornamentation  nor  light  nor  life  nor 
bustle  nor  laughter.  You  do  not  hear  people 
talking  and  calling  to  one  another  across  the 
narrow  streets  of  the  place  by  day  or  serenading 
by  night.  Every  one  seems  to  go  to  bed  at  nine 
o'clock,  and  after  that  hour  the  city  is  as  silent 
as  its  great  graveyard,  except  when  the  boy  po- 
licemen mark  the  hour  with  their  whistles  or  the 
street  dogs  meet  to  fight. 

The  most  interesting  thing  about  the  capital 
is  the  fact  to  which  I  have  already  alluded,  that 
everything  in  it  and  pertaining  to  it  that  was 
not  dug  from  the  ground  or  fashioned  from 
trees  was  carried  to  it  on  the  backs  of  mules. 


132 


THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


The  letter-boxes  on  the  street  corners  had  once 
been  United  States  letter-boxes,  and  had  later 
swung  across  the  backs  of  donkeys.  The  gas- 
lamps  and  the  iron  railings  of  the  parks,  the  few 
statues  and  busts  in  the  public  places,  reached 


STATUE   OF   MOKA/.AN 


Tegucigalpa  by  the  same  means,  and  the  great 
equestrian  statue  of  Morazan  the  Liberator,  in 
the  plaza,  was  cast  in  Italy,  and  had  been 
brought  to  Tegucigalpa  in  pieces  before  it  was 
put  together  like  a  puzzle  and  placed  in  its  pres- 
ent position  to  mark  a  glorious  and  victorious 


IN    HONDURAS  133 

immortality.  These  things  were  not  interesting 
in  themselves,  but  it  was  interesting  that  they 
were  there  at  all. 

On  the  second  day  after  our  arrival  the  vice- 
president,  Luis  Bonilla,  who  bears  the  same  last 
name  but  is  no  near  relation  to  President  Bonil- 
la, took  the  oath  of  office,  and  we  saw  the  cere- 
mony with  the  barefooted  public  in  the  recep- 
tion -  room  of  the  palace.  The  hall  was  hung 
with  lace  curtains  and  papered  with  imitation 
marble,  and  the  walls  were  decorated  with  cray- 
on portraits  of  Honduranian  presidents.  Bogran 
was  not  among  them,  nor  was  Morazan.  The 
former  was  missing  because  it  was  due  to  him 
that  young  Bonilla  had  been  counted  out  when 
he  first  ran  for  the  presidency  three  years  ago, 
when  he  was  thirty-three  years  old,  and  the  por- 
trait of  the  Liberator  was  being  reframed,  be- 
cause Bonilla's  followers  six  months  before  had 
unintentionally  shot  holes  through  it  when  they 
were  besieging  the  capital.  The  ceremony  of 
swearing  in  the  vice-president  did  not  last  long, 
and  what  impressed  us  most  about  it  was  the 
youth  of  the  members  of  the  cabinet  and  of  the 
Supreme  Court  who  delivered  the  oath  of  office. 
They  belonged  distinctly  to  the  politician  class 
as  one  sees  it  at  home,  and  were  young  men  of 
eloquent  speech  and  elegant  manners,  in  frock- 
coats  and  white  ties.  We  came  to  know  most  of 
the  president's  followers  later,  and  found  them 


134  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

hospitable  to  a  degree,  although  they  seemed 
hardly  old  enough  or  serious  enough  to  hold 
place  in  the  government  of  a  republic,  even  so 
small  a  one  as  Honduras.  What  was  most  ad- 
mirable about  each  of  them  was  that  he  had 
fought  and  bled  to  obtain  the  office  he  held. 
That  is  hardly  a  better  reason  for  giving  out 
clerkships  and  cabinet  portfolios  than  the  rea- 
sons which  obtain  with  us  for  distributing  the 
spoils  of  office,  but  you  cannot  help  feeling  more 
respect  for  the  man  who  has  marched  by  the  side 
of  his  leader  through  swamps  and  through  jungle, 
who  has  starved  on  rice,  who  has  slept  in  the 
bushes,  and  fought  with  a  musket  in  his  hand  in 
open  places,  than  for  the  fat  and  sleek  gentlemen 
who  keep  open  bar  at  the  headquarters  of  their 
party  organization,  who  organize  marching  clubs, 
and  who  by  promises  or  by  cash  secure  a  certain 
amount  of  influence  and  a  certain  number  of  votes. 
They  risk  nothing  but  their  money,  and  if  their 
man  fails  to  get  in,  their  money  is  all  they  lose ; 
but  the  Central  American  politician  has  to  show 
the  faith  that  is  in  him  by  going  out  on  the 
mountain-side  and  hacking  his  way  to  office  with 
a  naked  machete  in  his  hand,  and  if  his  leader 
fails,  he  loses  his  life,  with  his  back  to  a  church 
wall,  and  looking  into  the  eyes  of  a  firing  squad, 
or  he  digs  his  own  grave  by  the  side  of  the  road, 
and  stands  at  one  end  of  it,  covered  with  clay 
and  sweat,  and  with  the  fear  of  death  upon  him, 


IN    HONDURAS  137 

and  takes  his  last  look  at  the  hot  sun  and  the 
palms  and  the  blue  mountains,  with  the  buzzards 
wheeling  about  him,  and  then  shuts  his  eyes,  and 
is  toppled  over  into  the  grave,  with  a  half-dozen 
bullets  in  his  chest  and  stomach.  That  is  what 
I  should  like  to  see  happen  to  about  half  of  our 
professional  politicians  at  home.  Then  the  other 
half  might  understand  that  holding  a  public  of- 
fice is  a  very  serious  business,  and  is  not  merely 
meant  to  furnish  them  with  a  livelihood  and  with 
places  for  their  wives'  relations. 

I  saw  several  churches  and  cathedrals  in  Hon- 
duras with  a  row  of  bullet-holes  in  the  front  wall, 
about  as  high  from  the  ground  as  a  man's  chest, 
and  an  open  grave  by  the  road-side,  which  had 
been  dug  by  the  man  who  was  to  have  occupied  it. 
The  sight  gave  us  a  vivid  impression  of  the  un- 
certainties of  government  in  Central  America. 
The  man  who  dug  this  particular  grave  had  been 
captured,  with  two  companions,  while  they  were 
hastening  to  rejoin  their  friends  of  the  govern- 
ment party.  His  companions  in  misery  were 
faint-hearted  creatures,  and  thought  it  mattered 
but  little,  so  long  as  they  had  to  die,  in  what 
fashion  they  were  buried.  So  they  scooped  out 
a  few  feet  of  earth  with  the  tools  their  captors 
gave  them,  and  stood  up  in  the  hollows  they  had 
made,  and  were  shot  back  into  them,  dead ;  but 
the  third  man  declared  that  he  was  not  going  to 
let  his  body  lie  so  near  the  surface  of  the  earth 


138  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

that  the  mules  could  kick  his  bones  and  the 
next  heavy  freshet  wash  them  away.  He  ac- 
cordingly dug  leisurely  and  carefully  to  the  depth 
of  six  feet,  smoothing  the  sides  and  sharpening 
the  corners,  and  while  he  was  thus  engaged  at 


GENERAL   LOUIS  HOGRAN,   EX-PRESIDENT 

the  bottom  of  the  hole  he  heard  yells  and  shots 
above  him,  and  when  he  poked  his  head  up  over 
the  edge  of  the  grave  he  saw  his  own  troops  run- 
ning down  the  mountain-side,  and  his  enemies 
disappearing  before  them.  He  is  still  alive,  and 


IN    HONDURAS  139 

frequently  rides  by  the  hole  in  the  road-side  on 
his  way  to  the  capital.  The  story  illustrates  the 
advisability  of  doing  what  every  one  has  to  do 
in  this  world,  even  up  to  the  very  last  minute, 
in  a  thorough  and  painstaking  manner. 

There  do  not  seem  to  be  very  many  men  killed 
in  these  revolutions,  but  the  ruin  they  bring  to 
the  country  while  they  last,  and  which  continues 
after  they  are  over,  while  the  "  outs  "  are  getting 
up  another  revolution,  is  so  serious  that  any  sort 
of  continued  prosperity  or  progress  is  impossible. 
Native  merchants  will  not  order  goods  that  may 
never  reach  them,  and  neither  do  the  gringos 
care  to  make  contracts  with  men  who  in  six 
months  may  not  only  be  out  of  office,  but  out  of 
the  country  as  well.  Sometimes  a  revolution 
takes  place,  and  half  of  the  people  of  the  coun- 
try will  not  know  of  it  until  it  has  been  put 
down  or  has  succeeded  ;  and  again  the  revolu- 
tion may  spread  to  every  boundary,  and  all  the 
men  at  work  on  the  high-roads  and  in  the  mines 
or  on  the  plantations  must  stop  work  and  turn 
to  soldiering,  and  pack-mules  are  seized,  the  mail- 
carriers  stopped,  plantations  are  devastated,  and 
forced  loans  are  imposed  upon  those  who  live  in 
cities,  so  that  every  one  suffers  more  or  less 
through  every  change  of  executive.  During  the 
last  revolution  Tegucigalpa  was  besieged  for  six 
months,  and  was  not  captured  until  most  of  the 
public  buildings  had  been  torn  open  by  cannon 


140          THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

from  the  hills  around  the  town,  and  the  dwell- 
ing-houses still  show  where  bullets  marked  the 
mud  and  plaster  of  the  walls  or  buried  them- 
selves in  the  wood-work.  The  dining-room  of 
our  hotel  was  ventilated  by  such  openings,  and 
we  used  to  amuse  ourselves  by  tracing  the  course 
of  the  bullets  from  the  hole  they  had  made  at 
one  side  of  the  room  to  their  resting-place  in  the 
other.  The  native  Honduranian  is  not  energetic, 
and,  except  in  the  palace,  there  has  been  but 
little  effort  made  by  the  victors  to  cover  up  the 
traces  of  their  bombardment.  Every  one  we  met 
had  a  different  experience  to  relate,  and  pointed 
out  where  he  was  sitting  when  a  particular  hole 
appeared  in  the  plaster  before  him,  or  at  which 
street  corner  a  shell  fell  and  burst  at  his  feet. 

It  follows,  of  course,  that  a  government  which 
is  created  by  force  of  arms,  and  which  holds  it- 
self in  place  by  the  same  power  of  authority,  can- 
not be  a  very  just  or  a  very  liberal  one,  even  if 
its  members  are  honest,  and  the  choice  of  a  ma- 
jority of  the  people,  and  properly  in  office  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  they  fought  to  get  there, 
and  not  on  account  of  it.  Honilla  was  undoubt- 
edly at  one  time  elected  President  of  Honduras, 
although  he  did  not  gain  the  presidential  chair 
until  after  he  had  thrown  his  country  into  war 
and  had  invaded  it  at  the  head  of  troops  from 
the  rival  republic  of  Nicaragua. 

The  Central-American  cannot  understand  that 


IN    HONDURAS  143 

when  a  bad  man  is  elected  to  office  legally  it  is 
better  in  the  long-run  that  he  should  serve  out 
his  full  term  than  that  a  better  man  should  drive 
him  out  and  defy  the  constitution.  If  he  could 
be  brought  to  comprehend  that  when  the  consti- 
tution says  the  president  must  serve  four  years 
that  means  four  years,  and  not  merely  until  some 
one  is  strong  enough  to  overthrow  him,  it  might 
make  him  more  careful  as  to  whom  he  elected 
to  office  in  the  first  place.  But  the  value  of 
stability  in  government  is  something  they  can- 
not be  made  to  understand.  It  is  not  in  their 
power  to  see  it,  and  the  desire  for  change  and 
revolution  is  born  in  the  blood.  They  speak  of 
a  man  as  a  "  good  revolutionist "  just  as  we 
would  speak  of  some  one  being  a  good  pianist, 
or  a  good  shot,  or  a  good  executive  officer.  It 
is  a  recognized  calling,  and  the  children  grow  up 
into  fighters ;  and  even  those  who  have  lived 
abroad,  and  who  should  have  learned  better, 
begin  to  plot  and  scheme  as  soon  as  they  return 
to  their  old  environment. 

In  each  company  of  soldiers  in  Honduras 
there  are  two  or  three  little  boys  in  uniform 
who  act  as  couriers  and  messengers,  and  who 
are  able,  on  account  of  their  slight  figure,  to 
penetrate  where  a  man  would  be  seen  and  shot. 
One  of  the  officers  in  the  revolution  of  1894 
told  me  he  had  sent  six  of  these  boys,  one  after 
another,  with  despatches  across  an  open  plain 


144  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

which  was  being  raked  by  the  rifles  of  the  ene- 
my. And  as  each  boy  was  killed  as  he  crawled 
through  the  sage-brush  the  other  boys  begged  of 
their  colonel  to  let  them  be  the  next  to  go, 
jumping  up  and  down  around  him  and  snapping 
their  fingers  like  school -boys  who  want  to  at- 
tract the  attention  of  their  teacher. 

In  the  same  revolution  a  young  man  of  great 
promise  and  many  acquirements,  who  had  just 
returned  from  the  States  with  two  degrees  from 
Columbia  College,  and  who  should  have  lived  to 
turn  his  education  to  account  in  his  own  coun- 
try, was  killed  with  a  rifle  in  his  hand  the  third 
day  after  his  arrival  from  New  York.  In  that 
city  he  would  probably  have  submitted  cheerful- 
ly to  any  imposition  of  the  law,  and  would  have 
taken  it  quite  as  a  matter  of  course  had  he  been 
arrested  for  playing  golf  on  Sunday,  or  for  riding 
a  bicycle  at  night  without  a  lamp  ;  but  as  soon 
as  this  graduate  of  Columbia  smelled  the  pow- 
der floating  on  his  native  air  he  loaded  a  rifle, 
and  sat  out  all  day  on  the  porch  of  his  house 
taking  chance  shots  at  the  revolutionists  on  the 
hill-side,  until  a  chance  shot  ended  him  and  his 
brilliant  career  forever.  The  pity  of  it  is  that  so 
much  good  energy  should  be  wasted  in  obtain- 
ing such  poor  results,  for  nothing  better  ever 
seems  to  follow  these  revolutions.  There  is 
only  a  new  form  of  dictatorship,  which  varies 
only  in  the  extent  of  its  revenge  and  in  the  pun- 


IN    HONDURAS  145 

ishments  it  metes  out  to  its  late  opponents,  but 
which  must  be,  if  it  hopes  to  remain  in  power,  a 
dictatorship  and  an  autocracy. 

The  republics  of  Central  America  are  repub- 
lics   in    name    only,  and   the    movements   of    a 


MORAZAN,   THE   LIBERATOR   OF   HONDURAS 


stranger  within  the  boundaries  of  Honduras  are 
as  closely  watched  as  though  he  were  a  news- 
paper correspondent  in  Siberia.  I  often  had  to 
sign  the  names  of  our  party  twice  in  one  day  for 
the  benefit  of  police  and  customs  officers,  and 


146  THRKE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

we  never  entered  a  hotel  or  boarded  a  steamer 
or  disembarked  from  one  that  we  were  not  care- 
fully checked  and  receipted  for  exactly  as  though 
we  were  boxes  of  merchandise  or  registered  let- 
ters. Even  the  natives  cannot  walk  the  street 
after  nightfall  without  being  challenged  by  sen- 
tries, and  the  collection  of  letters  we  received 
from  alcaldes  and  comandantes  and  governors 
and  presidents  certifying  to  our  being  reputable 
citizens  is  large  enough  to  paper  the  side  of  a 
wall.  The  only  time  in  Central  America  when 
our  privacy  was  absolutely  unmolested,  and 
when  we  felt  as  free  to  walk  abroad  as  though 
we  were  on  the  streets  of  New  York,  was  when 
we  were  under  the  protection  of  the  hated  mo- 
narchical institution  of  Great  Britain  at  Belize, 
but  never  when  we  were  in  any  of  these  disor- 
ganized military  camps  called  free  republics. 

The  Central -American  citizen  is  no  more  fit 
for  a  republican  form  of  government  than  he  is 
for  an  arctic  expedition,  and  what  he  needs  is  to 
have  a  protectorate  established  over  him,  either 
by  the  United  States  or  by  another  power;  it 
does  not  matter  which,  so  long  as  it  leaves  the 
Nicaragua  Canal  in  our  hands.  In  the  capital 
of  Costa  Rica  there  is  a  statue  of  the  Republic 
in  the  form  of  a  young  woman  standing  with  her 
foot  on  the  neck  of  General  Walker,  the  Ameri- 
can filibuster.  We  had  planned  to  go  to  the 
capital  for  the  express  purpose  of  tearing  that 


IN    HONDURAS  147 

statue  down  some  night,  or  blowing  it  up ;  so  it 
is  perhaps  just  as  well  for  us  that  we  could  not 
get  there ;  but  it  would  have  been  a  very  good 
thing  for  Costa  Rica  if  Walker,  or  any  other 
man  of  force,  had  put  his  foot  on  the  neck  of 
every  republic  in  Central  America  and  turned  it 
to  some  account. 

Away  from  the  coasts,  where  there  is  fever, 
Central  Arrierica  is  a  wonderful  country,  rich 
and  beautiful,  and  burdened  with  plenty,  but  its 
people  make  it  a  nuisance  and  an  affront  to 
other  nations,  and  its  parcel  of  independent  lit- 
tle states,  with  the  pomp  of  power  and  none  of 
its  dignity,  are  and  will  continue  to  be  a  con- 
stant danger  to  the  peace  which  should  exist  be- 
tween two  great  powers. 

There  is  no  more  interesting  question  of  the 
present  day  than  that  of  what  is  to  be  done  with 
the  world's  land  which  is  lying  unimproved ; 
whether  it  shall  go  to  the  great  power  that  is 
willing  to  turn  it  to  account,  or  remain  with  its 
original  owner,  who  fails  to  understand  its  value. 
The  Central-Americans  are  like  a  gang  of  semi- 
barbarians  in  a  beautifully  furnished  house,  of 
which  they  can  understand  neither  its  possibili- 
ties of  comfort  nor  its  use.  They  are  the  dogs 
in  the  manger  among  nations.  Nature  has  given 
to  their  country  great  pasture -lands,  wonderful 
forests  of  rare  woods  and  fruits,  treasures  of  silver 
and  gold  and  iron,  and  soil  rich  enough  to  sup- 


148  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

ply  the  world  with  coffee,  and  it  only  waits  for 
an  honest  effort  to  make  it  the  natural  highway 
of  traffic  from  every  portion  of  the  globe.  The 
lakes  of  Nicaragua  are  ready  to  furnish  a  pas- 
sageway which  should  save  two  months  of  sail- 
ing around  the  Horn,  and  only  forty-eight  miles  of 
swamp-land  at  Panama  separate  the  two  greatest 
bodies  of  water  on  the  earth's  surface.  Nature 
has  done  so  much  that  there  is  little  left  for  man 
to  do,  but  it  will  have  to  be  some  other  man  than 
a  native-born  Central-American  who  is  to  do  it. 

We  had  our  private  audience  with  President 
Bonilla  in  time,  and  found  him  a  most  courteous 
and  interesting  young  man.  He  is  only  thirty- 
six  years  of  age,  which  probably  makes  him  the 
youngest  president  in  the  world,  and  he  carries 
on  his  watch-chain  a  bullet  which  was  cut  out  of 
his  arm  during  the  last  revolution.  He  showed 
us  over  the  palace,  and  pointed  out  where  he 
had  shot  holes  in  it,  and  entertained  us  most 
hospitably.  The  other  members  of  the  cabinet 
were  equally  kind,  making  us  many  presents,  and 
offering  Griscom  a  consul -generalship  abroad, 
and  consulates  to  Somerset  and  myself,  but  we 
said  we  would  be  ambassadors  or  nothing ;  so 
they  offered  to  make  us  generals  in  the  next 
revolution,  and  we  accepted  that  responsible 
position  with  alacrity,  knowing  that  not  even  the 
regiments  to  which  we  were  accredited  could 
force  us  again  into  Honduras. 


IN    HONDURAS  149 

Before  we  departed  the  president  paid  us  a 
very  doubtful  compliment  in  asking  us  to  ride 
with  him.  We  supposed  it  was  well  meant,  but 
we  still  have  secret  misgivings  that  it  was  a  plot 
to  rid  himself  of  us  and  of  the  vice-president  at 
the  same  time.  When  his  secretary  came  to 
tell  us  that  Dr.  Bonilla  would  be  glad  to  have  us 
ride  with  him  at  five  that  afternoon,  I  recalled 
the  fact  that  all  the  horses  I  had  seen  in  Hon- 
duras were  but  little  larger  than  an  ordinary 
donkey,  and  quite  as  depressed  and  spiritless. 
So  I  accepted  with  alacrity.  The  other  two 
men,  being  cross-country  riders,  and  entitled  to 
wear  the  gold  buttons  of  various  hunt  clubs  on 
their  waistcoats,  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course. 
But  when  we  reached  the  palace  we  saw  seven 
or  eight  horses  in  the  patio,  none  under  sixteen 
hands  high,  and  each  engaged  in  dragging  two 
or  three  grooms  about  the  yard,  and  swinging 
them  clear  of  the  brick  tiles  as  easily  as  a  sailor 
swings  a  lead.  The  president  explained  to  us 
that  these  were  a  choice  lot  of  six  stallions  which 
he  had  just  imported  from  Chili,  and  that  three 
of  them  had  never  worn  a  saddle  before  that 
morning. 

He  gave  one  of  these  to  Griscom  and  another 
one  to  the  vice-president,  for  reasons  best  known 
to  himself,  and  the  third  to  Somerset.  Gris- 
com's  animal  had  an  idea  that  it  was  better  to 
go  backward  like  a  crab  than  to  advance,  so  he 


150  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

backed  in  circles  around  the  courtyard,  while 
Somerset's  horse  seemed  best  to  enjoy  rearing 
himself  on  his  hind-legs,  with  the  idea  of  rubbing 
Somerset  off  against  the  wall ;  and  the  vice- 
president's  horse  did  everything  that  a  horse  can 
do,  and  a  great  many  things  that  I  should  not 
have  supposed  a  horse  could  do,  had  I  not  seen 
it.  I  put  my  beast's  nose  into  a  corner  of  the 
wall  where  he  could  not  witness  the  circus  per- 
formance going  on  behind  him,  and  I  watched 
the  president's  brute  turning  round  and  round 
and  round  until  it  made  me  dizzy.  We  stran- 
gers confessed  later  that  we  were  all  thinking  of 
exactly  the  same  thing,  which  was  that,  no  mat- 
ter how  many  of  our  bones  were  shattered,  we 
must  not  let  these  natives  think  they  could  ride 
any  better  than  any  chance  American  or  Eng- 
lishman, and  it  was  only  a  matter  of  national 
pride  that  kept  us  in  our  saddles.  The  vice- 
president's  horse  finally  threw  him  into  the  door- 
way and  rolled  on  him,  and  it  required  five  of 
his  officers  to  pull  the  horse  away  and  set  him 
on  his  feet  again.  The  vice- president  had  not 
left  his  saddle  for  an  instant,  and  if  he  han- 
dles his  men  in  the  field  as  he  handled  that 
horse,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  wins  many 
battles. 

Not  wishing  to  have  us  all  killed,  and  seeing 
that  it  was  useless  to  attempt  to  kill  the  vice- 
president  in  that  way,  Dr,  Bonilla  sent  word  to 


IN    HONDURAS  151 

the  band  to  omit  their  customary  salute,  and  so 
we  passed  out  in  grateful  silence  between  breath- 
less rows  of  soldiers  and  musicians  and  several 
hundreds  of  people  who  had  never  seen  a  life- 
sized  horse  before.  We  rode  at  a  slow  pace,  on 
account  of  the  vice-president's  bruises,  while  the 
president  pointed  out  the  different  points  from 
which  he  had  attacked  the  capital.  He  was  not 
accompanied  by  any  guard  on  this  ride,  and  in- 
formed us  that  he  was  the  first  president  who 
had  dared  go  abroad  without  one.  He  seemed 
to  trust  rather  to  the  good-will  of  the  pueblo,  to 
whom  he  plays,  and  to  whom  he  bowed  much 
more  frequently  than  to  the  people  of  the  richer 
class.  It  was  amusing  to  see  the  more  prominent 
men  of  the  place  raise  their  hats  to  the  president, 
and  the  young  girls  in  the  suburbs  nodding  casu- 
ally and  without  embarrassment  to  the  man.  Be- 
fore he  set  out  on  his  ride  he  stuck  a  gold-plated 
revolver  in  his  hip-pocket,  which  was  to  take  the 
place  of  the  guard  of  honor  of  former  presidents, 
and  to  protect  him  in  case  of  an  attempt  at  as- 
sassination. It  suggested  that  there  are  other 
heads  besides  those  that  wear  a  crown  which  rest 
uneasy. 

It  was  a  nervous  ride,  and  Griscom's  horse 
added  to  the  excitement  by  trying  to  back  him 
over  a  precipice,  and  he  was  only  saved  from 
going  down  one  thousand  yards  to  the  roofs  of 
the  city  below  by  several  of  the  others  dragging 


152          THREE   GRINGOS    IN   CENTRAL   AMERICA 

at  the  horse's  bridle.  When,  after  an  hour,  we 
found  ourselves  once  more  within  sight  of  the 
palace,  we  covertly  smiled  at  one  another,  and 
are  now  content  never  to  associate  with  presi- 
dents again  unless  we  walk. 

We  left  Tegucigalpa  a  few  days  later  with  a 
generous  escort,  including  all  the  consuls,  and 
Jose1  Guiteris,  the  assistant  secretary  of  state,  and 
nearly  all  of  the  foreign  residents.  We  made 
such  a  formidable  showing  as  we  raced  through 
the  streets  that  it  suggested  an  uprising,  and  we 
cried,  "  Viva  Guiteris  !"  to  make  the  people  think 
there  was  a  new  revolution  in  his  favor.  We 
shouted  with  the  most  loyal  enthusiasm,  but  it 
only  served  to  make  Guiteris  extremely  unhappy, 
and  he  occupied  himself  in  considering  how  he 
could  best  explain  to  Bonilla  that  the  demonstra- 
tion was  merely  an  expression  of  our  idea  of 
humor.  Twelve  miles  out  we  all  stopped  and 
backed  the  mules  up  side  by  side,  and  every- 
body shook  hands  with  everybody  else,  and  there 
were  many  promises  to  write,  and  to  forward  all 
manner  of  things,  and  assurances  of  eternal  re- 
membrance and  friendship,  and  then  the  Guite- 
ris revolutionists  galloped  back,  firing  parting 
salutes  with  their  revolvers,  and  we  fell  into  line 
again  with  a  nod  of  satisfaction  at  being  once 
more  on  the  road.* 

*  Guiteris  died  a  few  months  after  our  visit 


IN    HONDURAS  153 

We  never  expected  any  conveniences  or  com- 
forts on  the  road,  and  so  we  were  never  disap- 
pointed, and  were  much  happier  and  more  content- 
ed in  consequence  than  at  the  capital,  where  the 
name  promised  so  much  and  the  place  furnished 
so  little.  We  found  that  it  was  not  the  luxuries 
of  life  that  we  sighed  after,  but  the  mere  con- 
veniences— those  things  to  which  we  had  become 
so  much  accustomed  that  we  never  supposed  there 
were  places  where  they  did  not  exist.  A  chair 
with  a  back,  for  example,  was  one  of  the  things 
we  most  wanted.  We  had  never  imagined,  until 
we  went  to  Honduras,  that  chairs  grew  without 
backs ;  but  after  we  had  ridden  ten  hours,  and 
were  so  tired  that  each  man  found  himself  easing 
his  spinal  column  by  leaning  forward  with  his 
hands  on  the  pommel  of  his  saddle,  we  wanted 
something  more  than  a  three-legged  stool  when 
we  alighted  for  the  night. 

Our  ride  to  the  Pacific  coast  was  a  repetition  of 
the  ride  to  the  capital,  except  that,  as  there  was 
a  full  moon,  we  slept  in  the  middle  of  the  day 
and  rode  later  in  the  night.  During  this  nocturnal 
journey  we  met  many  pilgrims  going  to  the 
festivals.  They  were  all  mounted  on  mules,  and 
seemed  a  very  merry  and  jovial  company.  Some- 
times there  were  as  many  as  fifty  in  one  party, 
and  we  came  across  them  picnicking  in  the  shade 
by  day,  or  jogging  along  in  the  moonlight  in  a 
cloud  of  white  dust,  or  a  cloud  of  white  foam  as 


154  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

they  forded  the  broad  river  and  their  donkeys 
splashed  and  slipped  in  the  rapids.  The  nights 
were  very  beautiful  and  cool,  and  the  silence  un- 
der the  clear  blue  sky  and  white  stars  was  like 
the  silence  of  the  plains.  The  moon  turned 
the  trail  a  pale  white,  and  made  the  trees  on 
either  side  of  it  alive  with  shadows  that  seemed 
to  play  hide-and-seek  with  us,  and  the  stumps 
and  rocks  moved  and  gesticulated  with  life, 
until  we  drew  up  even  with  them,  when  they 
were  transformed  once  more  into  wood  and 
stone. 

It  was  on  the  third  day  out  from  the  capital, 
while  we  were  picking  our  way  down  the  side  of 
a  mountain,  that  Jeffs  pointed  to  what  looked 
like  a  lake  of  silver  lying  between  two  great  hills, 
and  we  knew  that  we  had  crossed  the  continent, 
and  so  raised  our  hats  and  saluted  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  A  day  later,  after  a  long,  rapid  ride  over 
a  level  plain  where  the  trail  was  so  broad  that  we 
could  ride  four  abreast,  we  came  to  San  Lorenzo, 
a  little  cluster  of  huts  at  the  edge  of  the  ocean. 
The  settlement  was  still  awake,  for  a  mule  train 
of  silver  had  just  arrived  from  the  San  Rosario 
mines,  and  the  ruddy  glare  of  pine  knots  was 
flashing  through  the  chinks  in  the  bamboo  walls 
of  the  huts,  and  making  yellow  splashes  of  color 
in  the  soft  white  light  of  the  moon.  We  swung 
ourselves  out  of  the  saddles  for  the  last  time,  and 
gave  the  little  mules  a  farewell  pat  and  many 


ON  THE   WAY  TO   CORINTO 


IN    HONDURAS  157 

thanks,  to  which  they  made  no  response  whatso- 
ever. 

Five  hours  later  we  left  the  continent  for  the 
island  of  Amapala,  the  chief  seaport  of  the  Pa- 
cific side  of  Honduras,  and  our  ride  was  at  an  end. 
We  left  San  Lorenzo  at  two  in  the  morning,  but 
we  did  not  reach  Amapala,  although  it  was  but 
fifteen  miles  out  to  sea,  until  four  the  next  after- 
noon. We  were  passengers  in  a  long,  open  boat, 
and  slept  stretched  on  our  blankets  at  the  bot- 
tom, while  four  natives  pulled  at  long  sweeps. 
There  were  eight  cross-seats,  and  a  man  sat  on 
every  other  one.  A  log  of  wood  in  which  steps 
had  been  cut  was  bound  to  each  empty  seat,  and 
it  was  up  this  that  the  rower  walked,  as  though 
he  meant  to  stand  up  on  the  seat  to  which  it  was 
tied,  but  he  would  always  change  his  mind  and 
sink  back  again,  bracing  his  left  leg  on  the  seat 
and  his  right  leg  on  the  log,  and  dragging  the 
oar  through  the  water  with  the  weight  of  his  body 
as  he  sank  backwards.  I  lay  on  the  ribs  of  the 
boat  below  them  and  watched  them  through  the 
night,  rising  and  falling  with  a  slight  toss  of  the 
head  as  they  sank  back,  and  with  their  brown 
naked  bodies  outlined  against  the  sky-line.  They 
were  so  silent  and  their  movements  so  regular 
that  they  seemed  like  statues  cut  in  bronze.  By 
ten  the  next  morning  they  became  so  far  animat- 
ed as  to  say  that  they  were  tired  and  hungry, 
and  would  we  allow  them  to  rest  on  a  little  isl- 


158  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

and  that  lay  half  a  mile  off  our  bow  ?  We  were 
very  glad  to  rest  ourselves,  and  to  get  out  of  the 
sun  and  the  glare  of  the  sea,  and  to  stretch  our 
cramped  limbs:  so  we  beached  the  boat  in  a  little 
bay,  and  frightened  off  thousands  of  gulls,  which 
rose  screaming  in  the  air,  and  which  were  appar- 
ently the  only  inhabitants. 

The  galley-slaves  took  sticks  of  driftwood  and 
scattered  over  the  rocks,  turning  back  the  sea- 
weed with  their  hands,  and  hacking  at  the  base 
of  the  rocks  with  their  improvised  hammers.  We 
found  that  they  were  foraging  for  oysters  ;  and  as 
we  had  nothing  but  a  tin  of  sardines  and  two  bis- 
cuits among  five  of  us,  and  had  had  nothing  to  eat 
for  twenty-four  hours,  we  followed  their  example, 
and  chipped  the  oysters  off  with  the  butts  of  our 
revolvers,  and  found  them  cool  and  coppery,  like 
English  oysters,  and  most  refreshing.  It  was 
such  a  lonely  little  island  that  we  could  quite  im- 
agine we  were  cast  away  upon  it,  and  began  to 
play  we  were  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  took  off  our 
boots  and  went  in  wading,  paddling  around  in  the 
water  after  mussels  and  crabs  until  we  were  chased 
to  shore  by  a  huge  shark.  Then  eveiy  one  went 
to  sleep  in  the  sand  until  late  in  the  afternoon, 
when  a  breeze  sprang  up,  and  a  boatman  carried 
us  out  on  his  shoulders,  and  we  dashed  off  gayly 
under  full  sail  to  the  isle  of  Amapala,  where  we 
bade  good-bye  to  Colonel  Jeffs  and  to  the  Repub- 
lic of  Honduras. 


IN    HONDURAS  159 

We  had  crossed  the  continent  at  a  point 
where  it  was  but  little  broader  than  the  distance 
from  Boston  to  New  York,  a  trip  of  five  hours 
by  train,  but  which  had  taken  us  twenty- two 
days. 


AT    CORINTO 


|VERY  now  and  again  each  of  us, 
either  through  his  own  choice  or  by 
force  of  circumstance,  drops  out  of 
step  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  and 
retires  from  it  into  the  isolation  of  a  sick-room, 
or  to  the  loneliness  of  the  deck  of  an  ocean 
steamer,  and  for  some  short  time  the  world  some- 
how manages  to  roll  on  without  him. 

He  is  like  a  man  who  falls  out  of  line  in  a  reg- 
iment to  fasten  his  shoelace  or  to  fill  his  can- 
teen, and  who  hears  over  his  shoulder  the  hurry- 
ing tramp  of  his  comrades,  who  are  leaving  him 
farther  and  farther  behind,  so  that  he  has  to  run 
briskly  before  he  can  catch  up  with  them  and 
take  his  proper  place  once  more  in  the  proces- 
sion. 

I  shall  always  consider  the  ten  days  we  spent 
at  Corinto,  on  the  Pacific  side  of  Nicaragua, 
while  we  waited  for  the  steamer  to  take  us  south 
to  Panama,  as  so  many  days  of  non-existence, 


AT   CORINTO  l6l 

as  so  much  time  given  to  the  mere  exercise  of 
living,  when  we  were  no  more  of  this  world  than 
are  the  prisoners  in  the  salt-mines  of  Siberia,  or 
the  keepers  of  light-houses  scattered  over  sunny 
seas,  or  the  men  who  tend  toll-gates  on  empty 
country  lanes.  And  so  when  I  read  in  the  news- 
papers last  fall  that  three  British  ships  of  war 
were  anchored  in  the  harbor  of  Corinto,  with 
their  guns  loaded  to  the  muzzles  with  ultima- 
tums and  no  one  knows  what  else  besides,  and 
that  they  meant  to  levy  on  the  customs  dues  of 
that  sunny  little  village,  it  was  as  much  of  a  shock 
to  me  as  it  would  be  to  the  inhabitants  of  Sleepy 
Hollow  were  they  told  that  that  particular  spot 
was  wanted  as  a  site  for  a  World's  Fair. 

For  no  ships  of  any  sort,  certainly  no  ships  of 
war,  ever  came  to  Corinto  while  we  occupied  the 
only  balcony  of  its  only  hotel.  Indeed,  that  was 
why  we  were  there,  and  had  they  come  we  would 
have  gone  with  them,  no  matter  to  what  port 
they  were  bound,  even  to  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  earth. 

We  had  come  to  Corinto  from  the  little  island 
of  Amapala,  which  lies  seventy-five  miles  farther 
up  the  coast,  and  which  guards  the  only  port 
of  entry  to  Honduras  on  the  Pacific  seaboard. 
It  is  supposed  to  belong  to  the  Republic  of  Hon- 
duras, but  it  is  in  reality  the  property  of  Rossner 
Brothers,  who  sell  everything  from  German  ma- 
chetes to  German  music-boxes,  and  who  could, 


162 


THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


PRINCIPAL   HOTEL   AND   PRINCIPAL   HOUSK   AT   CORINTO 


if  they  wanted  it,  purchase  the  entire  Republic 
of  Honduras  in  the  morning,  and  make  a  pres- 
ent of  it  to  the  Kaiser  in  the  course  of  the  after- 
noon. You  have  only  to  change  the  name  of 
Rossner  Brothers  to  the  San  Rosario  Mining 
Company,  to  the  Pacific  Mail,  to  Errman  Broth- 
ers, to  the  Panama  Railroad  Company,  and  you 
will  identify  the  actual  rulers  of  one  or  of  sev- 
eral of  the  republics  of  Central  America. 

It  is  very  well  for  President  Zelaya,  or  Barrios, 
or  Vasquez,  or  whatever  his  name  may  happen 
to  be  this  month,  to  write  to  the  New  York 


AT   COR  INTO  163 

Herald  and  tell  the  people  of  the  United  States 
what  the  revolution  in  his  country  means.  It 
does  no  harm  ;  no  one  in  the  United  States 
reads  the  letter,  except  the  foreign  editor  who 
translates  it,  and  no  one  in  his  own  country  ever 
sees  it,  but  it  makes  him  happy  in  thinking  he  is 
persuading  some  one  that  he  governs  in  his  own 
way.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  does  not.  His 
country,  no  matter  what  her  name  may  be,  is 
ruled  by  a  firm  of  coffee-merchants  in  New  York 
city,  or  by  a  German  railroad  company,  or  by  a 
line  of  coasting  steamers,  or  by  a  great  trading- 
house,  with  headquarters  in  Berlin  or  London  or 
Bordeaux.  If  the  president  wants  money  he  bor- 
rows it  from  the  trading-house  ;  if  he  wants  arms, 
or  his  soldiers  need  blankets,  the  trading-house 
supplies  them.  No  one  remembers  now  who  was 
President  of  Peru  when  Henry  Meiggs  was  alive, 
and  to-day  William  L.  Grace  is  a  better  name  on 
letters  of  introduction  to  Chili  and  Peru  than  that 
of  a  secretary  of  state. 

When  we  were  in  Nicaragua,  one  little  English 
banking-house  was  fighting  the  minister  of 
finance  and  the  minister  of  foreign  affairs  and 
the  president  and  the  entire  government,  and 
while  the  notes  issued  by  the  bank  were  accepted 
at  their  face  value,  those  of  the  government  were 
taken  only  in  the  presence  of  a  policeman  or  a  sol- 
dier, who  was  there  to  see  that  you  did  take  them. 
You  find  this  condition  of  affairs  all  through 


164          THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

Central  America,  and  you  are  not  long  in  a  re- 
public before  you  learn  which  merchant  or  which 
bank  or  which  railroad  company  controls  it,  and 
you  soon  grow  to  look  upon  a  mule  loaded  with 
boxes  bearing  the  trade-mark  of  a  certain  busi- 
ness-house with  more  respect  than  upon  a  sol- 
dier who  wears  the  linen  ribbon  of  the  govern- 
ment. For  you  know  that  at  a  word  the  soldier 
will  tear  the  ribbon  from  his  straw  sombrero  and 
replace  it  with  another  upon  which  is  printed 
"  Viva  Dr.  Somebody  Else,"  while  the  trade- 
mark of  the  business  -  house  will  continue  as 
long  as  English  and  German  merchandise  is  car- 
ried across  the  sea  in  ships.  And  it  will  also 
continue  as  long  as  Great  Britain  and  Germany 
and  the  United  States  are  represented  by  con- 
suls and  consular  agents  who  are  at  the  same 
time  the  partners  of  the  leading  business  firms 
in  the  seaport  over  which  their  consular  juris- 
diction extends.  For  few  Central-American  re- 
publics are  going  to  take  away  a  consul's  exe- 
quatur as  long  as  they  owe  him  in  his  unofficial 
capacity  for  a  large  loan  of  money ;  and  the 
merchant,  on  the  other  hand,  knows  that  he  is 
not  going  to  suffer  from  the  imposition  of  a 
forced  loan,  nor  see  his  mules  seized,  as  long  as 
the  tin  sign  with  the  American  eagle  screaming 
upon  it  is  tacked  above  the  brass  business  plate 
of  his  warehouse. 

There  was  a  merchant  in  Tegucigalpa  named 


AT  CORINTO  165 

Santos  Soto  —  he  is  there  still,  I  believe  —  and 
about  a  year  ago  President  Vasquez  told  him  he 
needed  a  loan  of  ten  thousand  dollars  to  assist 
him  in  his  struggle  against  Bonilla ;  and  as  Soto 
was  making  sixty  thousand  dollars  a  year  in  the 
country,  he  suggested  that  he  had  better  lend  it 
promptly.  Soto  refused,  and  was  locked  in  the 
cartel,  where  it  was  explained  to  him  that  for 
every  day  he  delayed  in  giving  the  money  the 
amount  demanded  of  him  would  be  increased 
one  thousand  dollars.  As  he  still  refused,  he 
was  chained  to  an  iron  ball  and  led  out  to  sweep 
the  streets  in  front  of  his  shop,  which  extends 
on  both  sides  of  the  principal  thoroughfare  of 
the  capital.  He  is  an  old  man,  and  the  sight  of 
the  chief  merchant  in  Tegucigalpa  sweeping  up 
the  dust  in  front  of  his  own  block  of  stores  had 
a  most  salutary  effect  upon  the  other  merchants, 
who  promptly  loaned  the  sums  demanded  of 
them,  taking  rebates  on  customs  dues  in  ex- 
change—  with  one  exception.  This  merchant 
owned  a  jewelry  store,  and  was  at  the  same 
time  the  English  consular  agent.  He  did  not 
sweep  the  streets,  nor  did  he  contribute  to  the 
forced  loan.  He  values  in  consequence  his  tin 
sign,  which  is  not  worth  much  as  a  work  of  art, 
at  about  ten  thousand  dollars. 

There  is  much  that  might  be  written  of  con- 
sular agents  in  Central  America  that  would  dif- 
fer widely  from  the  reports  written  by  them- 


1 66  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

selves  and  published  by  the  State  Department. 
The  most  interesting  thing  about  them,  to  my 
mind,  is  the  fact  that  none  of  them  ever  seem  to 
represent  a  country  which  they  have  ever  seen, 
and  that  they  are  always  citizens  of  another 
country  to  which  they  are  anxious  to  return.  I 
find  that  after  Americans,  Germans  make  the  best 
American  consular  agents,  and  Englishmen  the 
best  German  consular  agents,  while  French  con- 
sular agents  would  be  more  useful  to  their  coun- 
trymen if  they  could  speak  French  as  well  as 
they  do  Spanish.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  consular  agent  at  Corinto,  you  find  a  native 
of  Italy  representing  both  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States.  A  whole  comic  opera  could  be 
written  on  the  difficulties  of  a  Nicaraguan  act- 
ing as  an  English  and  American  consul,  with 
three  British  men-of-war  in  the  harbor  levying 
on  the  customs  dues  of  his  native  land,  and  an 
American  squadron  hastening  from  Panama  to 
see  that  their  English  cousins  did  not  gather  in 
a  few  islands  by  mistake. 

If  he  called  on  the  British  admiral,  and  re- 
ceived his  seven -gun  salute,  would  it  constitute 
a  breach  of  international  etiquette  if  he  were 
rowed  over  to  the  American  admiral  and  received 
seven  guns  from  him  ;  and  as  a  native  of  Nicara- 
gua could  he  see  the  customs  dues,  which  com- 
prise the  government's  chief  source  of  revenue, 
going  into  the  pockets  of  one  country  which  he 


AT   CORINTO  167 

so  proudly  serves  without  complaining  to  the 
other  country  which  he  serves  with  equal  satis- 
faction ?  Every  now  and  then  you  come  across 
a  real  American  consul  who  was  born  in  Ameri- 
ca, and  who  serves  the  United  States  with  abil- 
ity, dignity,  and  self-respect,  so  that  you  are  glad 
you  are  both  Americans.  Of  this  class  we  found 
General  Allen  Thomas  at  La  Guayra,  who  was 
later  promoted  and  made  United  States  minister 
at  Caracas,  Mr.  Alger  at  Puerto  Cortez,  Mr.  Little 
at  Tegucigalpa,  and  Colonel  Bird  at  Caracas. 

We  found  that  the  firm  of  Rossner  Brothers 
had  in  their  employ  the  American  and  English 
consular  agents,  and  these  gentlemen  endeared 
themselves  to  us  by  assisting  at  our  escape  from 
their  island  in  an  open  boat.  They  did  not  tell 
us,  however,  that  Fonseca  Bay  was  one  of  the 
most  treacherous  stretches  of  water  on  the  ad- 
miralty charts  ;  but  that  was,  probably,  because 
they  were  merchants  and  not  sailors. 

Amapala  was  the  hottest  place  I  ever  visit- 
ed. It  did  not  grow  warm  as  the  day  wore  on, 
but  began  briskly  at  sunrise  by  nailing  the  mer- 
cury at  fever- heat,  and  continued  boiling  and 
broiling  until  ten  at  night.  By  one  the  next 
morning  the  roof  over  your  head  and  the  bed- 
linen  beneath  you  had  sufficiently  cooled  for  you 
to  sleep,  and  from  that  on  until  five  there  was  a 
fair  imitation  of  night. 

There  was  but  one  cool  spot  in  Amapala ;  it 


l68  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

was  a  point  of  land  that  the  inhabitants  had 
rather  tactlessly  selected  as  a  dumping- ground 
for  the  refuse  of  the  town,  and  which  was  only 
visited  by  pigs  and  buzzards.  This  point  of  land 
ran  out  into  the  bay,  and  there  had  once  been 
an  attempt  made  to  turn  it  into  a  public  park,  of 
which  nothing  now  remains  but  a  statue  to  Mo- 
razan,  the  Liberator  of  Honduras.  The  statue 
stood  on  a  pedestal  of  four  broad  steps,  sur- 
rounded by  an  iron  railing,  the  gates  of  which 
had  fallen  from  their  hinges,  and  lay  scattered 
over  the  piles  of  dust  and  debris  under  which 
the  park  is  buried.  At  each  corner  of  the  railing 
there  were  beautiful  macaws  which  had  once 
been  painted  in  brilliant  reds  and  greens  and 
yellows,  and  which  we  tried  to  carry  off  one 
night,  until  we  found  that  they  also  were  made 
of  iron.  We  would  have  preferred  the  statue  of 
Morazan  as  a  souvenir,  but  that  we  doubted  its 
identity.  Morazan  was  a  smooth-faced  man  with 
a  bushy  head  of  hair,  and  this  statue  showed  him 
with  long  side- whiskers  and  a  bald  head,  and  in 
the  uniform  of  an  English  admiral.  It  was  prob- 
ably the  rejected  work  of  some  English  sculptor, 
and  had  been  obtained,  no  doubt,  at  a  moderate 
price,  and  as  very  few  remember  Morazan  to-day 
it  answers  its  purpose  excellently  well.  We  be- 
came very  much  attached  to  it,  and  used  to  burn 
incense  to  it  in  the  form  of  many  Honduranian 
cigars,  which  sell  at  two  cents  apiece. 


AT   CORINTO  169 

When  night  came  on,  and  the  billiard-room 
had  grown  so  hot  that  the  cues  slipped  in  our 
hands,  and  the  tantalizing  sight  of  an  American 
ice-cooler,  which  had  never  held  ice  since  it  left 
San  Francisco,  had  driven  us  out  into  the  night, 
we  would  group  ourselves  at  the  base  of  this 
statue  to  Morazan,  and  throw  rocks  at  the  buz- 
zards and  pigs,  and  let  the  only  breeze  that  dares 
to  pass  over  Amapala  bring  our  temperature 
down  to  normal.  We  should  have  plotted  a  revo- 
lution by  rights,  for  the  scene  was  set  for  such  a 
purpose,  and  no  one  in  the  town  accounted  in  any 
other  way  for  our  climbing  the  broken  iron  rail- 
ing nightly,  and  remaining  on  the  steps  of  the 
pedestal  until  two  the  next  morning. 

Amapala,  I  suppose,  was  used  to  heat,  and 
could  sleep  with  the  thermometer  at  ninety,  and 
did  not  mind  the  pigs  or  the  buzzards,  and  if  we 
did  plot  to  convert  Honduras  into  a  monarchy 
and  make  Somerset  king,  no  one  heard  us  but 
the  English  edition  of  Morazan  smiling  blandly 
down  upon  us  like  a  floor-walker  at  the  Army 
and  Navy  Stores,  with  his  hand  on  his  heart 
and  an  occasional  buzzard  soaring  like  Poe's  ra- 
ven above  his  marble  forehead.  The  moonlight 
turned  him  into  a  figure  of  snow,  and  the  great 
palms  above  bent  and  waved  and  shivered  un- 
ceasingly, and  the  sea  beat  on  the  rocks  at  our 
feet. 

It  was  an  interesting  place  of  rendezvous,  but 


170  THRF.E    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

we  tired  of  a  town  that  grew  cool  only  after  mid- 
night, and  in  which  the  fever  stalked  abroad  by 
day.  So  we  chartered  a  small  boat,  and  provi- 
sioned it,  and  enlisted  a  crew  of  pirates,  and  set 
sail  one  morning  for  Corinto,  seventy- five  miles 
farther  south.  There  was  no  steamer  expected 
at  Corinto  at  any  earlier  date  than  at  Amapala, 
but  in  the  nature  of  things  one  had  to  touch 
there  some  time,  and  there  was  a  legend  to  which 
•we  had  listened  with  doubt  and  longing  to  the 
effect  that  at  Corinto  there  was  an  ice -machine, 
and  though  we  found  later  that  the  ice-machines 
always  broke  on  the  day  we  arrived  in  port, 
we  preferred  the  chance  of  finding  Fonseca  Bay 
in  a  peaceful  state  to  yellow-fever  at  Amapala. 
It  was  an  exciting  voyage.  I  would  now,  being 
more  wise,  choose  the  yellow-fever,  but  we  did 
not  know  any  better  then.  There  was  no  deck 
to  the  boat,  and  it  was  not  wide  enough  for  one 
to  lie  lengthwise  from  side  to  side,  and  too 
crowded  to  permit  of  our  stretching  our  bodies 
fore  and  aft.  So  we  rolled  about  on  top  of  one 
another,  and  were  far  too  miserable  to  either 
apologize  or  swear  when  we  bumped  into  a  man's 
ribs  or  sat  on  his  head. 

We  started  with  a  very  fine  breeze  dead  astern, 
and  the  boat  leaped  and  plunged  and  rolled  all 
night,  and  we  were  hurled  against  the  sides  and 
thumped  by  rolling  trunks,  and  travelling-bags, 
and  gun- cases,  and  boxes  of  broken  apollinaris 


AT   CORINTO  171 

bottles.  The  stone- breaker  in  a  quarry  would 
have  soothed  us  in  comparison.  And  when  the 
sun  rose  fully  equipped  at  four  in  the  morning 
the  wind  died  away  absolutely,  and  we  rose  and 
sank  all  day  on  the  great  swell  of  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  The  boat  was  painted  a  bright  red  in- 
side and  out,  and  the  sun  turned  this  open  red 
bowl  into  an  oven  of  heat.  It  made  even  our 
white  flannels  burn  when  they  touched  the  skin 
like  a  shirt  of  horse -hair.  As  far  as  we  covild 
look  on  every  side  the  ocean  lay  like  a  sea  of 
quicksilver,  and  the  dome  of  the  sky  glittered 
with  heat.  The  red  paint  on  the  sides  bubbled 
and  cracked,  and  even  the  native  boatmen  cow- 
ered under  the  cross-seats  with  their  elbows  fold- 
ed on  their  knees  and  their  faces  buried  in  their 
arms ;  and  we  had  not  the  heart  to  tell  them  to 
use  the  oars,  even  if  we  had  known  how.  At 
noon  the  chief  pirate  crawled  over  the  other 
bodies  and  rigged  up  the  sail  so  that  it  threw  a 
shadow  over  mine,  and  I  lay  under  this  awning 
and  read  Barrie's  Lady  Nicotine,  while  the  type 
danced  up  and  down  in  waving  lines  like  the  let- 
ters in  a  typewriter.  I  am  sure  it  was  only  the 
necessity  which  that  book  impressed  upon  me  of 
holding  on  to  life  until  I  could  smoke  the  Arca- 
dia mixture  that  kept  me  from  dropping  over- 
board and  being  cremated  in  the  ocean  below. 

We  sighted  the  light -house  of  Corinto  at  last, 
and  hailed  the  white  custom-house  and  the  palms 


172  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

and  the  blue  cottages  of  the  port  with  a  feeble 
cheer. 

The  people  came  down  to  the  shore  and 
crowded  around  her  bow  as  we  beached  her  in 
front  of  the  custom-house,  and  a  man  asked 
us  anxiously  in  English,  "  What  ship  has  been 
wrecked  ?"  And  we  explained  that  we  were  not 
survivors  of  a  shipwreck,  but  of  a  possible  con- 
flagration, and  wanted  ice. 

»And  then,  when  we  fell  over  the  side  bruised 
and  sleepy,  and  burning  with  thirst,  and  with 
everything  still  dancing  before  our  eyes,  they  re- 
fused to  give  us  ice  until  we  grew  cooler,  and 
sent  out  in  the  meanwhile  to  the  comandancia  in 
search  of  some  one  who  could  identify  us  as 
escaped  revolutionists.  They  took  our  guns 
away  from  us  as  a  precaution,  but  they  could 
have  had  half  our  kingdom  for  all  we  cared,  for 
the  wonderful  legend  proved  true,  and  at  last  we 
got  the  ice  in  large,  thick  glasses,  with  ginger 
ale  and  lemon  juice  and  apollinaris  water  trick- 
ling through  it,  and  there  was  frost  on  the  sides 
of  the  glasses,  and  a  glimpse  of  still  more  ice 
wrapped  up  in  smoking  blankets  in  the  refrigera- 
tor— ice  that  we  had  not  tasted  for  many  days 
of  riding  in  the  hot  sun  and  through  steaming 
swamp-lands,  and  which  we  had  last  seen  treated 
with  contempt  and  contumely,  knocked  about  at 
the  bow  of  a  tug -boat  in  the  North  River,  and 
tramped  upon  by  many  muddy  feet  on  Fifth  Av- 


AT   COR1NTO  173 

enue.  None  of  us  will  ever  touch  ice  hereafter 
without  handling  it  with  the  same  respect  and 
consideration  that  we  would  show  to  a  precious 
stone. 

The  busybodies  of  Corinto  who  had  decided 
from  the  manner  of  our  arrival  that  we  had  been 
forced  to  leave  Honduras  for  the  country's  good, 
finally  found  a  native  who  identified  me  as  a 
filibuster  he  had  met  during  the  last  revolution 
at  Leon.  As  that  was  bringing  it  rather  ne.ar 
home,  Griscom  went  after  Mr.  Palaccio,  the  Ital- 
ian who  serves  both  England  and  the  United 
States  as  consular  agent.  We  showed  him  a  rare 
collection  of  autographs  of  secretaries,  ambassa- 
dors, and  prime-ministers,  and  informed  him  that 
we  intended  taking  four  state-rooms  on  the 
steamer  of  the  line  he  represented  at  that  port. 
This  convinced  him  of  the  necessity  of  keeping 
us  out  of  jail  until  the  boat  arrived,  and  he  satis- 
fied the  local  authorities  as  to  our  respectability, 
and  that  we  had  better  clothes  in  our  trunks. 

Corinto  is  the  best  harbor  on  the  Pacific  side 
of  Nicaragua,  but  the  town  is  not  as  large  as  the 
importance  of  the  port  would  suggest.  It  con- 
sists of  three  blocks  of  two-story  houses,  facing 
the  harbor  fifty  feet  back  from  the  water's  edge, 
with  a  sandy  street  between  each  block  of  build- 
ings. There  are  about  a  thousand  inhabitants, 
and  a  foreign  population  which  varies  from  five 
residents  to  a  dozen  transient  visitors  and  stew- 


174  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

ards  on  steamer  days.  The  natives  are  chiefly 
occupied  in  exporting  coffee  and  receiving  the 
imported  goods  for  the  interior,  and  the  princi- 
pal amusement  of  the  foreign  colony  is  bathing 
or  playing  billiards.  It  has  a  whist  club  of  four 
members.  The  fifth  foreign  resident  acts  as  a 
substitute  in  the  event  of  any  one  of  the  four 
players  chancing  to  have  'another  engagement, 
but  as  there  is  no  one  with  whom  he  could  have 
an  engagement,  the  substitute  is  seldom  called 
upon.  He  told  me  he  had  been  sitting  by  and 
smoking  and  watching  the  others  play  whist  for 
a  month  now,  and  hoping  that  one  of  them 
would  have  a  sunstroke. 

We  left  Corinto  the  next  morning  and  took 
the  train  to  Lake  Managua,  where  we  were 
to  connect  with  a  steamer  which  crosses  the 
lake  to  the  capital.  It  was  a  beautiful  ride, 
and  for  some  distance  ran  along  the  sea-shore, 
where  the  ocean  rolled  up  the  beach  in  great 
waves,  breaking  in  showers  of  foam  upon  the 
rocks.  Then  we  crossed  lagoons  and  swamps  on 
trestles,  and  passed  pretty  thatched  villages,  and 
saw  many  beautiful  women  and  girls  selling 
candy  and  sugar-cane  at  the  stations.  They 
wore  gowns  that  left  the  neck  and  shoulders 
bare,  and  wrapped  themselves  in  silk  shawls  of 
solid  colors,  which  they  kept  continually  loosen- 
ing and  rearranging,  tossing  the  ends  coquet- 
tishly  from  one  shoulder  to  the  other,  or  drawing 


;  W ;: 


AT   CORINTO  177 

them  closely  about  the  figure,  or  like  a  cowl 
over  the  head.  This  silk  shawl  is  the  most 
characteristic  part  of  the  wardrobe  of  the  native 
women  of  Central  America.  It  is  as  inevitable 
as  the  mantilla  of  their  richer  sisters,  and  it  is 
generally  the  only  bit  of  splendor  they  possess. 
A  group  of  them  on  a  feast-day  or  Sunday,  when 
they  come  marching  towards  you  with  green, 
purple,  blue,  or  yellow  shawls,  makes  a  very  strik- 
ing picture. 

These  women  of  the  pueblo  in  Honduras  and 
Nicaragua  were  better-looking  than  the  women 
of  the  lower  classes  of  any  country  I  have  ever 
visited.  They  were  individually  more  beautiful, 
and  the  proportion  of  beautiful  women  was  great- 
er. A  woman  there  is  accustomed  from  her 
childhood  to  carry  heavy  burdens  on  her  head, 
and  this  gives  to  all  of  them  an  erect  carriage 
and  a  fearless  uplifting  of  the  head  when  they 
walk  or  stand.  They  have  never  known  a  tight 
dress  or  a  tight  shoe,  and  they  move  as  easily 
and  as  gracefully  as  an  antelope.  Their  hair  is 
very  rich  and  heavy,  and  they  oil  it  and  comb  it 
and  braid  it  from  morning  to  night,  wearing 
it  parted  in  the  middle,  and  drawn  tightly  back 
over  the  ears,  and  piled  upon  the  head  in  heavy 
braids.  Their  complexion  is  a  light  brown,  and 
their  eyes  have  the  sad  look  which  one  sees  in 
the  eyes  of  a  deer  or  a  dog,  and  which  is  not  so 
much  the  sign  of  any  sorrow  as  of  the  lack  of  in- 


178  THREE   GRINGOS    IN   CENTRAL    AMERICA 

telligencc.  The  women  of  the  upper  classes  are 
like  most  Spanish-American  women,  badly  and 
over  dressed  in  a  gown  fashioned  after  some  for- 
gotten Parisian  mode,  with  powder  over  their 
faces,  and  with  their  hair  frizzled  and  curled  in 
ridiculous  profusion.  They  are  a  very  sorry  con- 
trast to  a  woman  of  the  people,  such  as  you  see 
standing  in  the  doorways  of  the  mud-huts,  or 
advancing  towards  you  along  the  trail  with  an 
earthen  jar  on  her  shoulder,  straight  of  limb,  and 
with  a  firm,  fine  lower  jaw,  a  low,  broad  forehead, 
and  shy,  sad  eyes. 

Managua,  the  capital  of  Nicaragua,  is  a  most 
dismal  city,  built  on  a  plain  of  sun-dried  earth, 
with  houses  of  sun-dried  earth,  plazas  and  parks 
and  streets  of  sun-dried  earth,  and  a  mantle  of 
dust  over  all.  Even  the  stores  that  have  been 
painted  in  colors  and  hung  with  balconies  have  a 
depressed,  dirty,  and  discouraged  air.  The  streets 
are  as  full  of  ruts  and  furrows  as  a  country  road, 
the  trees  in  the  plaza  are  lifeless,  and  their  leaves 
shed  dust  instead  of  dew,  and  the  people  seem  to 
have  taken  on  the  tone  of  their  surroundings, 
and  very  much  more  of  the  dust  than  seems  ab- 
solutely necessary.  We  were  there  only  two 
days,  and  felt  when  we  left  as  though  we  had 
been  camping  out  on  a  baseball  diamond ;  and 
we  were  sure  that  had  we  remained  any  longer 
we  should  have  turned  into  living  statues  of  clay 
when  the  sun  shone,  and  of  mud  when  it  rained. 


AT   CORINTO  l8l 

There  was  no  American  minister  or  consul  at 
Managua  at  the  time  of  our  visit,  but  the  English 
consul  took  very  good  care  of  us,  and  acted  as 
our  interpreter  when  we  called  upon  the  presi- 
dent. Relations  between  the  consul  and  Presi- 
dent Zelaya  were  somewhat  strained  at  that  time, 
and  though  we  knew  this  we  told  the  consul  to  tell 
the  president  how  much  he  was  admired  by  the 
American  people  for  having  taken  the  stand  he 
did  against  the  English  on  the  Mosquito  Coast 
question,  and  that  we  hoped  he  would  see  that 
the  British  obtained  no  foothold  near  our  canal. 
At  which  the  English  consul  would  hesitate  and 
grin  unhappily,  and  remark,  in  a  hurried  aside, 
"  I'll  be  hanged  if  I'll  translate  that."  So  we  con- 
tinued inventing  other  pleasant  speeches  deroga- 
tory to  Britons  and  British  influence  in  Nicaragua 
until  Somerset  and  his  consul  protested  vigorous- 
ly, and  the  president  saw  what  we  were  doing 
and  began  to  enjoy  the  consul's  embarrassment 
and  laughed,  and  the  consul  laughed  with  him, 
and  they  made  up  their  quarrel  —  for  the  time 
being,  at  least. 

Zelaya  said,  among  other  things,  that  if  there 
were  no  other  argument  in  favor  of  the  Nicaragua 
Canal  than  that  it  would  enable  the  United  States 
to  move  her  ships  of  war  quickly  from  ocean  to 
ocean,  instead  of  being  forced  as  she  is  now  to 
make  them  take  the  long  journey  around  Cape 
Horn,  it  would  be  of  inestimable  benefit.  He  also 


182  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

said  that  the  only  real  objection  that  had  been 
made  in  the  United  States  to  the  canal  came  from 
those  interested  in  the  transcontinental  railroads, 
who  saw  in  its  completion  the  destruction  of  their 
freight  traffic. 

He  seemed  to  be  a  very  able  man,  and  more  a 
man  of  the  world  than  Bonilla,  the  President  of 
Honduras,  and  much  older  in  many  ways.  He 
was  apparently  somewhat  of  a  philosopher,  and 
believed,  or  said  he  did,  in  the  survival  of  the  fit- 
test as  applied  to  the  occupation  of  his  country. 
He  welcomed  the  gringos,  he  said,  and  if  they 
were  better  able  to  rule  Nicaragua  than  her  own 
people,  he  would  accept  that  fact  as  inevitable 
and  make  way  before  them. 

We  returned  to  Corinto  after  wallowing  in  the 
dust-bins  of  Managua  as  joyfully  as  though  it 
were  a  home,  and  we  were  so  anxious  to  reach 
the  ocean  again  that  we  left  Granada  and  Leon, 
which  are,  so  we  are  told,  much  more  attractive 
than  the  capital,  out  of  our  route. 

Corinto  was  bright  and  green  and  sunny,  and 
the  waters  of  the  big  harbor  before  it  danced 
and  flashed  by  day  and  radiated  with  phosphor- 
escent fire  by  night.  It  was  distinctly  a  place 
where  it  would  occur  to  one  to  write  up  the  back 
pages  of  his  diary,  but  it  was  interesting  at  least 
in  showing  us  the  life  of  the  exiles  in  these  hot, 
far-away  seaports  among  a  strange  people. 

There  was  but  one  hotel,  which  happened  to  be 


PRESIDENT   ZELAYA   OF   NICARAGUA 


AT   CORINTO  185 

a  very  good  one  with  a  very  bad  proprietor,  who, 
I  trust,  will  come  some  day  to  an  untimely  death 
at  the  end  of  one  of  his  own  billiard-cues.  The 
hotel  was  built  round  a  patio  filled  with  palms 
and  ramparts  of  empty  bottles  from  the  bar,  cov- 
ered with  dust,  and  bearing  the  name  of  every 
brewer  and  wine-grower  in  Europe.  The  sleep- 
ing-rooms were  on  the  second  floor,  and  looked 
on  the  patio  on  one  side  and  upon  a  wide  cov- 
ered veranda  which  faced  the  harbor  on  the 
other.  The  five  resident  gringos  in  Corinto  lived 
at  the  hotel,  and  sat  all  day  on  this  veranda 
swinging  in  their  hammocks  and  swapping  six- 
months-old  magazines  and  tattered  novels.  Read- 
ing-matter assumed  an  importance  in  Corinto  it 
had  never  attained  before,  and  we  read  all  the 
serial  stories,  of  which  there  was  never  more  than 
the  fourth  or  sixth  instalment,  and  the  scientific 
articles  on  the  Fall  of  the  Rupee  in  India,  or  the 
Most  Recent  Developments  in  Electricity,  and 
delighted  in  the  advertisements  of  seeds  and 
bicycles  and  baking-powders. 

The  top  of  our  veranda  was  swept  by  a  row 
of  plane-trees  that  grew  in  the  sandy  soil  of  the 
beach  below  us,  and  under  the  shade  of  which 
were  gathered  all  the  idle  ones  of  the  port. 
There  were  among  them  thieving  ships'  stewards 
who  had  been  marooned  from  passing  vessels, 
ne'er-do-wells  from  the  interior  who  were  "  comb- 
ing the  beach  "  and  looking  for  work,  but  not  so 


l86  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

diligently  that  they  had  seen  the  coffee  planta- 
tions on  their  tramp  down  to  the  coast,  and  who 
begged  for  money  to  take  them  back  to  "  God's 
country,"  or  to  the  fever  hospital  at  Panama. 
With  them  were  natives,  sailors  from  the  rolling 
tug-boat  they  called  a  ship  of  war,  and  bare- 
footed soldiers  from  the  cartel,  and  longshore- 
men with  over-developed  chests  and  muscles,  who 
toil  mightily  on  steamer  days  and  sleep  and  eat 
for  the  ten  days  between  as  a  reward. 

All  of  these  idlers  gathered  in  the  shade  around 
the  women  who  sold  sweet  drinks  and  sticks  of 
pink-and-yellow  candy.  They  were  the  public 
characters  of  the  place  and  the  centre  of  all  the 
gossip  of  the  town,  and  presided  over  their  tables 
with  great  dignity  in  freshly  ironed  frocks  and 
brilliant  turbans.  They  were  very  handsome  and 
very  clean-looking,  with  bare  arms  and  shoulders, 
and  their  hair  always  shone  with  cocoanut  oil, 
and  was  wonderfully  braided  and  set  off  with 
flowers  stuck  coquettishly  over  one  car.  The 
men  used  to  sit  around  them  in  groups  on  the 
bags  of  coffee  waiting  for  export,  and  on  the 
boxes  of  barbed  wire,  which  seemed  to  be  the 
only  import.  And  sometimes  a  small  boy  would 
buy  a  stick  of  candy  or  command  the  mixture 
of  a  drink,  and  the  woman  would  fuss  over  her 
carved  gourds,  and  rinse  and  rub  them  and  mix 
queer  liquors  with  a  whirling  stick  of  wood  that 
she  spun  between  the  palms  of  her  hands.  We 


^T   CORINTO  187 

would  all  watch  the  operation  with  great  interest, 
the  natives  on  the  coffee-sacks  and  ourselves  upon 
the  balcony,  and  regard  the  small  boy  while  he 
drank  the  concoction  with  envy. 

The  veranda  had  loose  planks  for  its  floor,  and 
gaping  knot-holes  through  which  the  legs  of  our 
chairs  would  sink  suddenly,  and  which  we  could 
use  on  those  occasions  when  we  wanted  to  drop 
penknives  and  pencils  and  water  on  the  heads  of 
those  passing  below.  Our  companions  in  idle- 
ness were  the  German  agents  of  the  trading- 
houses  and  young  Englishmen  down  from  the 
mines  to  shake  off  a  touch  of  fever,  and  two 
Americans  who  were  taking  a  phonograph 
through  Central  America.  Their  names  were 
Edward  Morse  and  Charles  Brackett,  and  we  will 
always  remember  them  as  the  only  Americans 
we  met  who  were  taking  money  out  of  Central 
America  and  not  bringing  it  there  to  lose  it. 

Every  afternoon  we  all  tramped  a  mile  or  two 
up  the  beach  in  the  hot  sun  for  the  sake  of  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  of  surf-bathing,  which  was  de- 
lightful in  itself,  and  which  was  rendered  espe- 
cially interesting  by  our  having  to  share  the 
surf  with  large  man-eating  sharks.  When  they 
came,  which  they  were  sure  to  do  ten  minutes 
after  we  had  arrived,  we  generally  gave  them  our 
share. 

The  phonograph  men  and  our  party  did  not 
believe  in  sharks;  so  we  would  venture  out  sorne 


l88  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

distance,  leaving  the  Englishmen  and  the  Ger- 
mans standing  like  sandpipers  where  the  water 
was  hardly  up  to  their  ankles,  and  keeping  an 
anxious  lookout  for  us  and  themselves.  Had 
the  sharks  attempted  to  attack  us  from  the  land, 
they  would  have  afforded  excellent  protection. 
When  they  all  yelled  at  once  and  ran  back  up 
the  beach  into  the  bushes,  we  knew  that  they 
thought  we  had  been  in  long  enough,  and  we 
came  out,  and  made  as  much  noise  as  we  could 
while  doing  so.  But  there  would  be  invariably 
one  man  left  behind — one  man  who  had  walked 
out  farther  than  the  others,  and  who,  owing  to 
the  roar  of  the  surf,  could  not  hear  our  shrieks 
of  terror.  It  was  exciting  to  watch  him  from 
the  beach  diving  and  splashing  happily  by  him- 
self, and  shaking  the  water  out  of  his  ears  and 
hair,  blissfully  unconscious  of  the  deserted  waste 
of  waters  about  him  and  of  the  sharp,  black  fin 
that  shot  like  a  torpedo  from  wave  to  wave. 
We  would  watch  him  as  he  turned  to  speak  to 
the  man  who  the  moment  before  had  been 
splashing  and  diving  on  his  right,  and,  missing 
him,  turn  to  the  other  side,  and  then  whirl  about 
and  see  us  all  dancing  frantically  up  and  down 
in  a  row  along  the  beach,  beckoning  and  scream- 
ing and  waving  our  arms.  We  could  observe 
even  at  that  distance  his  damp  hair  rising  on  his 
head  and  his  eyes  starting  out  of  their  sockets 
as  he  dug  his  toes  into  the  sand  and  pushed 


AT   CORINTO  189 

back  the  water  with  his  arms,  and  worked  his 
head  and  shoulders  and  every  muscle  in  his 
whole  body  as  though  he  were  fighting  his  way 
through  a  mob  of  men.  The  water  seemed  very 
opaque  at  such  times,  and  the  current  appeared 
to  have  turned  seaward,  and  the  distance  from 
shore  looked  as  though  it  were  increasing  at 
every  step. 

When  night  came  to  Corinto  we  would  sit  out 
on  the  wharf  in  front  of  the  hotel  and  watch  the 
fish  darting  through  the  phosphorescent  waters 
and  marking  their  passage  with  a  trail  of  fire,  or 
we  would  heave  a  log  into  it  and  see  the  sparks 
fly  just  as  though  we  had  thrown  it  upon  a 
smouldering  fire.  One  night  one  of  the  men 
was  obliging  enough  to  go  into  it  for  our  benefit, 
and  swam  under  water,  sweeping  great  circles 
with  his  arms  and  legs.  He  was  outlined  as 
clearly  in  the  inky  depths  below  as  though  he 
wore  a  suit  of  spangles.  Sometimes  a  shark  or 
some  other  big  fish  drove  a  shoal  of  little  fish 
towards  the  shore,  and  they  would  turn  the  whole 
surface  of  the  water  into  half-circles  of  light  as 
they  took  leap  after  leap  for  safety.  Later  in 
the  evening  we  would  go  back  to  the  veranda 
and  listen  to  our  friends  the  phonograph  im- 
presarios play  duets  on  the  banjo  and  guitar, 
and  in  return  for  the  songs  of  the  natives  they 
had  picked  up  in  their  wanderings  we  would 
sing  to  them  those  popular  measures  which  had 


1QO  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

arisen  into   notice  since   they   had    left    civiliza- 
tion. 

This  was  our  life  at  Corinto  for  ten  idle  days, 
until  at  last  the  steamer  arrived,  and  the  passen- 
gers came  on  shore  to  stretch  their  legs  and  buy 
souvenirs,  and  the  ship's  steward  bustled  about 
in  search  of  fresh  vegetables,  and  the  lighters 
plied  heavily  between  the  shore  and  the  ship's 
side,  piled  high  with  odorous  sacks  of  coffee. 
And  then  Morse  and  Brackett  started  with  their 
phonograph  through  Costa  Rica,  and  we  con- 
tinued on  to  Panama,  leaving  the  five  foreign 
residents  of  Corinto  to  the  uninterrupted  enjoy- 
ment of  their  whist,  and  richer  and  happier 
through  our  coming  in  an  inaccurate  knowledge 
of  the  first  verse  and  tune  of  "Tommy  Atkins," 
which  they  shouted  at  us  defiantly  as  they  pulled 
back  from  the  steamer's  side  to  their  quiet  haven 
of  exile. 


ON   THE    ISTHMUS    OF   PANAMA 


'F  Ulysses  in  his  wanderings  had  at- 
tempted to  cross  the  Isthmus  of  Pan- 
ama his  account  of  the  adventure 
would  not  have  been  filled  with  en- 
gineering reports  or  health  statistics,  nor  would 
it  have  dwelt  with  horror  on  the  irregularities 
of  the  canal  company.  He  would  have  treated 
the  isthmus  in  language  full  of  imagination,  and 
would  have  delivered  his  tale  in  the  form  of  an 
allegory.  He  would  have  told  how  on  such  a 
voyage  his  ship  came  upon  a  strip  of  land  join- 
ing two  great  continents  and  separating  two 
great  oceans ;  how  he  had  found  this  isthmus 
guarded  by  a  wicked  dragon  that  exhaled  poison 
with  every  breath,  and  that  lay  in  wait,  buried 
in  its  swamps  and  jungles,  for  sailors  and  travel- 
lers, who  withered  away  and  died  as  soon  as 
they  put  foot  upon  the  shore.  But  that  he, 
warned  in  time  by  the  sight  of  thousands  of 
men's  bones  whitening  on  the  beach,  hoisted  all 
sail  and  stood  out  to  sea. 
13 


IQ4  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

It  is  quite  as  easy  to  believe  a  story  like  that 
as  to  believe  the  truth :  that  for  the  last  century 
a  narrow  strip  of  swamp  land  has  blocked  the 
progress  of  the  world  ;  that  it  has  joined  the 
peoples  of  two  continents  without  permitting 
them  to  use  it  as  a  thoroughfare ;  that  it  has 
stopped  the  meeting  of  two  great  oceans  and 
the  shipping  of  the  world,  and  that  it  has  killed 
with  its  fever  half  of  those  who  came  to  do  battle 
against  it.  There  is  something  almost  uncanny 
in  the  manner  in  which  this  strip  of  mud  and 
water  has  resisted  the  advance  of  man,  as  though 
there  really  were  some  evil  genius  of  the  place 
lurking  in  the  rnorasses  and  brooding  over  the 
waters,  throwing  out  its  poison  like  a  serpent, 
noiselessly  and  suddenly,' meeting  the  last  ar- 
rival at  the  very  moment  of  his  setting  foot 
upon  the  wharf,  arrogant  in  health  and  hope  and 
ambition,  and  leaving  him  with  clinched  teeth 
and  raving  with  madness  before  the  sun  sets. 
It  is  like  the  old  Minotaur  and  his  yearly  tribute 
of  Greek  maidens,  with  the  difference  that  now 
it  is  the  lives  of  men  that  are  sacrificed,  and 
men  who  are  chosen  from  every  nation  of  the 
world,  speaking  every  language,  believing  in 
every  religion  ;  and  to-day  the  end  of  each  is 
marked  by  a  wooden  plank  in  the  Catholic 
Cemetery,  in  the  Hebrew  Cemetery,  in  the 
French  Cemetery,  in  the  English  Cemetery,  in 
the  American  Cemetery,  for  there  arc  acres  and 


ON    THE   ISTHMUS   OF    PANAMA  197 

acres  of  cemeteries  and  thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  wooden  head-stones,  to  which  the  evil 
spirit  of  the  isthmus  points  mockingly,  and  says, 
"  These  are  your  failures." 

The  fields  of  Waterloo  and  Gettysburg  saw  a 
sacrifice  of  life  but  little  greater  than  these  fifty 
miles  of  swamp  land  between  North  and  South 
America  have  seen,  and  certainly  they  saw  no 
such  inglorious  defeats,  without  a  banner  flying 
or  a  comrade  cheering,  or  the  roar  of  musketry 
and  cannon  to  inspire  the  soldiers  who  fell  in 
the  unequal  battle.  Those  who  died  striving  to 
save  the  Holy  Land  from  the  unspeakable  Turk 
were  comforted  by  the  promise  of  a  glorious 
immortality,  and  it  must  have  been  gratifying 
in  itself  to  have  been  described  as  a  Crusader, 
and  to  have  worn  the  red  cross  upon  one's 
shoulder.  And,  in  any  event,  a  man  who  would 
not  fight  for  his  religion  or  his  country  without 
promises  or  pensions  is  hardly  worthy  of  con- 
sideration. But  these  young  soldiers  of  the 
transit  and  sailors  of  the  dredging-scow  had  no 
promises  or  sentiment  to  inspire  them;  they 
were  not  fighting  for  the  boundaries  of  their 
country,  but  redeeming  a  bit.^f  No  Man's  Land; 
not  doing  battle  for  their  God,  but  merely 
digging  a  canal.  And  it  must  strike  every  one 
that  those  of  them  who  fell  doing  their  duty  in 
the  sickly  yellow  mist  of  Panama  and  along  the 
gloomy  stretches  of  the  Chagres  River  deserve  a 


198  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

better  monument  to  their  memories  than  the 
wooden  slabs  in  the  cemeteries. 

It  is  strange  that  not  only  nature,  but  man 
also,  should  have  selected  the  same  little  spot  on 
the  earth's  surface  in  which  to  show  to  .the 
world  exactly  how  disagreeable  and  unpleasant 
they  can  make  themselves  when  they  choose. 
It  seems  almost  as  though  the  isthmus  were  un- 
holy ground,  and  that  there  was  a  curse  upon  it. 
Some  one  should  invent  a  legend  to  explain  this, 
and  tell  ho\v  one  of  the  priests  who  came  over 
with  Columbus  put  the  ban  of  the  Church  upon 
the  land  for  some  affront  by  its  people  to  the 
voyagers,  and  so  placed  it  under  a  curse  for- 
ever. For  those  whom  the  fever  did  not  kill  the 
canal  company  robbed,  and  the  ruin  that  came 
to  the  peasants  of  France  was  as  irredeemable 
as  the  ravages  of  the  fever,  and  the  scandal  that 
spattered  almost  every  public  man  in  Paris  ex- 
posed rottenness  and  corruption  as  far  advanced 
as  that  in  the  green-coated  pools  along  the  Rio 
Grande. 

Ruins  are  always  interesting,  but  the  ruins  of 
Panama  fill  one  'only  with  melancholy  and  dis- 
gust, and  the  relics  of  this  gigantic  swindle  can 
only  inspire  you  with  a  contempt  for  yourself 
and  your  fellow -men,  and  you  blush  at  the 
evidences  of  barefaced  rascality  about  you. 
And  even  the  honest  efforts  of  those  who  are 
now  in  charge,  and  who  are  trying  to  save  what 


ON    THE    ISTHMUS   OF    PANAMA  2OI 

remains,  and  once  more  to  build  up  confidence 
in  the  canal,  reminded  me  of  the  town  council- 
lors of  Johnstown  who  met  in  a  freight  depot  to 
decide  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  town  and 
those  of  its  inhabitants  that  had  not  been  swept 
out  of  existence. 

There  are  forty-eight  miles  of  railroad  across 
the  isthmus,  stretching  from  the  town  of  Pana- 
ma on  the  Pacific  side  to  that  of  Colon — or 
Aspinwall,  as  it  was  formerly  called  —  on  the 
Caribbean  Sea.  The  canal  starts  a  little  north 
of  the  town  of  Panama,  in  the  mouth  of  the 
Rio  Grande,  and  runs  along  on  one  side  or 
the  other  of  the  railroad  to  the  port  of  Colon. 
The  Chagres  River  starts  about  the  middle  of 
the  isthmus,  and  follows  the  route  of  the  canal 
in  an  easterly  direction,  until  it  empties  itself 
into  the  Caribbean  Sea  a  little  north  of  Colon. 

The  town  of  Panama,  as  you  approach  it  from 
the  bay,  reminds  you  of  an  Italian  seaport,  ow- 
ing to  the  balconies  which  overhang  the  water 
and  the  colored  house-fronts  and  projecting  red 
roofs.  As  seen  from  the  inside,  the  town  is  like 
any  other  Spanish-American  city  of  the  second 
class.  There  are  fiacres  that  rattle  and  roll 
through  the  clean  but  narrow  streets  behind  un- 
dersized ponies  that  always  move  at  a  gallop ; 
there  are  cool,  dark  shops  open  to  the  streets,  and 
hundreds  of  negroes  and  Chinese  coolies,  and  a 
handsome  plaza,  and  some  very  large  municipal 


202  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

buildings  of  five  stories,  which  appeared  to  us, 
after  our  experience  with  a  dead  level  of  one- 
story  huts,  to  tower  as  high  as  the  Auditorium. 
Panama,  as  a  town,  and  considered  by  itself,  and 
not  in  connection  with  the  canal,  reminded  me  of 
a  Western  county-seat  after  the  boom  had  left  it. 
There  appeared  to  be  nothing  going  forward  and 
nothing  to  do.  The  men  sat  at  the  caf£s  during 
the  day  and  talked  of  the  past,  and  went  to  a 
club  at  night.  We  saw  nothing  of  the  women, 
but  they  seem  to  have  a  greater  degree  of  free- 
dom than  their  sisters  in  other  parts  of  Spanish 
America,  owing,  no  doubt,  to  the  cosmopolitan 
nature  of  the  inhabitants  of  Panama. 

But  the  city,  and  the  people  in  it,  interest  you 
chiefly  because  of  the  canal ;  and  even  the  ruins 
of  the  Spanish  occupation,  and  the  tales  of  buc- 
caneers and  of  bloody  battles  and  buried  treas- 
ure, cannot  touch  you  so  nearly  as  do  the  great, 
pretentious  building  of  the  company  and  the 
stories  of  De  Lesseps'  visit,  and  the  ceremonies 
and  feastings  and  celebrations  which  inaugurated 
the  greatest  failure  of  modern  times. 

The  new  director  of  the  canal  company  put  a 
tug  at  our  disposal,  and  sent  us  orders  that  per- 
mitted us  to  see  as  much  of  the  canal  as  has  been 
completed  from  the  Pacific  side.  But  before  pre- 
senting our  orders  we  drove  out  from  the  city 
one  afternoon  and  began  a  personally  conducted 
inspection  of  the  machine-shops. 


ON    THE    ISTHMUS    OF    PANAMA  205 

We  had  read  of  the  pathetic  spectacle  present- 
ed by  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  locomotive 
engines  and  machinery  lying  rotting  and  rusting 
in  the  swamps,  and  as  it  had  interested  us  when 
we  had  read  of  it,  we  were  naturally  even  more  anx- 
ious to  see  it  with  our  own  eyes.  We,  however, 
did  not  see  any  machinery  rusting,  nor  any  loco- 
motives lying  half  buried  in  the  mud.  All  the 
locomotives  that  we  saw  were  raised  from  the 
ground  on  ties  and  protected  with-a  wooden  shed, 
and  had  been  painted  and  oiled  and  cared  for  as 
they  would  have  been  in  the  Baldwin  Locomo- 
tive Works.  We  found  the  same  state  of  things 
in  the  great  machine-works,  and  though  none  of 
us  knew  a  turning-lathe  from  a  sewing-machine, 
we  could  at  least  understand  that  certain  wheels 
should  make  other  wheels  move  if  everything 
was  in  working  order,  and  so  we  made  the  wheels 
go  round,  and  punched  holes  in  sheets  of  iron 
with  steel  rods,  and  pierced  plates,  and  scraped 
iron  bars,  and  climbed  to  shelves  twenty  and 
thirty  feet  from  the  floor,  only  to  find  that  each 
bit  and  screw  in  each  numbered  pigeon-hole  was 
as  sharp  and  covered  as  thick  with  oil  as  though 
it  had  been  in  use  that  morning. 

This  was  not  as  interesting  as  it  would  have 
been  had  we  seen  what  the  other  writers  who 
have  visited  the  isthmus  saw.  And  it  would  have 
given  me  a  better  chance  for  descriptive  writing 
had  I  found  the  ruins  of  gigantic  dredging-ma- 


206          THREE   GRINGOS    IN   CENTRAL   AMERICA 

chines  buried  in  the  morasses,  and  millions  of 
dollars'  worth  of  delicate  machinery  blistering 
and  rusting  under  the  palm-trees ;  but,  as  a  rule, 
it  is  better  to  describe  things  just  as  you  saw 
them,  and  not  as  it  is  the  fashion  to  see  them, 
even  though  your  way  be  not  so  picturesque. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  care  the  company  was 
taking  of  its  machinery  and  its  fleet  of  dredging- 
scows  and  locomotives  struck  me  as  being  much 
more  pathetic  than  the  sight  of  the  same  instru- 
ments would  have  been  had  we  found  them  aban- 
doned to  the  elements  and  the  mud.  For  it  was 
like  a  general  pipe-claying  his  cross-belt  and  pol- 
ishing his  buttons  after  his  army  had  been  routed 
and  killed,  and  he  had  lost  everything,  including 
honor. 

There  was  a  little  village  of  whitewashed  huts 
on  the  southern  bank  of  the  Rio  Grande,  where 


HUTS   OK    WORKMEN    EMPLOYED    ON    THE   CANAL 


\ 
ON    THE    ISTHMUS    OF    PANAMA  207 

the  men  lived  who  take  care  of  the  fleet  and  the 
machine-shop,  and  it  was  as  carefully  kept  and  as 
clean  as  a  graveyard.  Before  the  crash  came  the 
quarters  of  the  men  used  to  ring  with  their  yells 
at  night,  and  the  music  of  guitars  and  banjos 
came  from  the  open  doors  of  caf£s  and  drinking- 
booths,  and  a  pistol-shot  meant  no  more  than  a 
momentary  punctuation  of  the  night's  pleasure. 
Those  were  great  days,  and  there  were  thousands 
of  men  where  there  are  now  a  score,  and  a  line  of 
light  and  deviltry  ran  from  the  canal's  mouth  for 
miles  back  to  the  city,  where  it  blazed  into  a 
great  fire  of  dissolute  pleasure  and  excitement. 
In  those  days  men  were  making  fortunes  in  a 
night,  and  by  ways  as  dark  as  night — by  furnish- 
ing machinery  that  could  not  even  be  put  togeth- 
er, by  supplying  blocks  of  granite  that  cost  more 
in  freight  than  bars  of  silver,  by  kidnapping  work- 
men for  the  swamps,  and  by  the  simple  methods 
of  false  accounts  and  credits.  And  while  some 
were  growing  rich,  others  were  living  with  the 
fear  of  sudden  death  before  their  eyes,  and  drink- 
ing the  native  rum  that  they  might  forget  it,  and 
throwing  their  wages  away  on  the  roulette-tables, 
and  eating  and  drinking  and  making  merry  in  the 
fear  that  they  might  die  on  the  morrow. 

Mr.  Wells,  an  American  engineer,  was  in 
charge  of  the  company's  flotilla,  and  waited  for 
us  at  the  wharf. 

"  I    saw  you    investigating   our   engines,"  he 


208  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

said.  "That's  all  right.  Only  tell  the  truth 
about  what  you  see,  and  we  won't  mind." 

We  stood  on  the  bow  of  the  tug  and  sped  up 
the  length  of  the  canal  between  great  dredging- 
machines  that  towered  as  high  above  us  as  the 
bridge  of  an  ocean  liner,  and  that  weighed  ap- 
parently as  much  as  a  battle-ship.  The  decks 
of  some  of  them  were  split  with  the  heat,  and 
there  were  shutters  missing  from  the  cabin  win- 
dows, but  the  monster  machinery  was  intact, 
and  the  wood-work  was  freshly  painted  and 
scrubbed.  They  reminded  me  of  a  line  of  old 
ships  of  war  at  rest  in  some  navy-yard.  They 
represent  in  money  value,  even  as  they  are  to- 
day, five  million  francs.  Beyond  them  on  either 
side  stretched  low  green  bushes,  through  which 
the  Rio  Grande  bent  and  twisted,  and  beyond 
the  bushes  were  high  hills  and  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
into  which  the  sun  set,  leaving  us  cold  and  de- 
pressed. 

Except  for  the  bubbling  of  the  water  under 
our  bow  there  was  not  a  sound  to  disturb  the 
silence  that  hung  above  the  narrow  canal  and 
the  green  bushes  that  rose  from  a  bed  of  water. 
I  thought  of  the  entrance  of  the  Suez  Canal,  as 
I  had  seen  it  at  Port  Said  and  at  Ismailia, 
with  great  P.  &  O.  steamers  passing  down 
its  length,  and  troop-ships  showing  hundreds  of 
white  helmets  above  the  sides,  and  tramp  steamers 
and  sailing-vessels  flying  every  flag,  and  com- 


f 


THE  TOP  OF  A     DREDGE 


ON    THE    ISTHMUS    OF    PANAMA  211 

pared  it  and  its  scenes  of  life  and  movement 
with  this  dreary  waste  before  us,  with  the  idle 
dredges  rearing  their  iron  girders  to  the  sky, 
the  engineers'  sign-posts  half  smothered  in  the 
water  and  the  mud,  and  with  a  naked  fisherman 
paddling  noiselessly  down  the  canal  with  his 
eyes  fixed  on  the  water,  his  hollowed  log  canoe 
the  only  floating  vessel  in  what  should  have 
been  the  highway  of  the  world. 

There  were  about  eight  hundred  men  in  all 
working  along  the  whole  length  of  the  canal 
while  we  were  there,  instead  of  the  twelve  thou- 
sand that  once  made  the  place  hum  with  ac- 
tivity. But  the  work  the  twelve  thousand  ac- 
complished remains,  and  the  stranger  is  surprised 
to  find  that  there  is  so  much  of  it  and  that  it  is 
so  well  done.  It  looks  to  his  ignorant  eyes  as 
though  only  a  little  more  energy  and  a  greater 
amount  of  honesty  would  be  necessary  to  open 
the  canal  to  traffic ;  but  experts  will  tell  him 
that^one  hundred  million  dollars  will  have  to  be 
expended  and  seven  or  eight  years  of  honest 
work  done  before  that  -ditch  can  be  dug  and 
France  hold  a  Kiel  celebration  of  her  own. 

But  before  that  happens  every  citizen  of  the 
United  States  should  help  to  open  the  Nicaragua 
Canal  to  the  world  under  the  protection  and 
the  virtual  ownership  of  his  own  country. 

Our  stay  in  Panama  was  shortened  somewhat 
on  account  of  our  having  taken  too  great  an  in- 


212  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

terest  in  the  freedom  of  a  young  lawyer  and 
diplomat,  who  was  arrested  while  we  were  there, 
charged  with  being  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
revolution. 

He  was  an  acquaintance  of  Lloyd  Griscom's, 
who  took  an  interest  in  the  young  rebel  because 
they  had  both  been  in  the  diplomatic  service 
abroad.  One  afternoon,  while  Griscom  and  the 
lawyer  were  sitting  together  in  the  office  of  the 
latter,  five  soldiers  entered  the  place  and  ordered 
the  suspected  revolutionist  to  accompany  them 
to  the  cartel.  As  he  happened  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  law,  he  protested  that  they  must 
first  show  him  a  warrant,  and  while  two  of  them 
went  out  for  the  warrant  and  the  others  kept 
watch  in  the  outer  office  Griscom  mapped  out  a 
plan  of  escape.  The  lawyer's  office  hung  over 
the  Bay  of  Panama,  and  Griscom's  idea  was  that 
he  should,  under  the  protection  of  the  darkness, 
slip  down  a  rope  from  the  window  to  a  small 
boat  below  and  be  rowed  out  to  the  Barracouta, 
of  the  Pacific  Mail  Company's  line,  which  was 
listed  to  sail  that  same  evening  up  the  coast. 
The  friends  of  the  rebel  were  sent  for,  and  with 
their  assistance  Griscom  made  every  preparation 
for  the  young  rebel's  escape,  and  then  came  to 
the  hotel  and  informed  Somerset  and  myself  of 
what  he  had  done,  and  asked  us  to  aid  in  what 
was  to  follow.  We  knew  nothing  of  the  rights 
or  the  wrongs  of  the  revolutionists,  but  we  con- 


STREET   SCENE   IN   PANAMA 


ON    THE    ISTHMUS   OF    PANAMA  215 

sidered  that  a  man  who  was  going  down  a  rope 
into  a  small  boat  while  three  soldiers  sat  waiting 
for  him  in  an  outer  room  was  performing  a 
sporting  act  that  called  for  our  active  sympathy. 
So  we  followed  Griscom  to  his  friend's  office, 
and,  having  passed  the  soldiers,  were  ushered 
into  his  presence  and  introduced  to  him  and  his 
friends.  He  was  a  little  man,  but  was  not  at  all 
alarmed,  nor  did  he  pose  or  exhibit  any  brag- 
gadocio, as  a  man  of  weaker  calibre  might  have 
done  under  the  circumstances.  When  we  offered 
to  hold  the  rope  for  him,  or  to  block  up  the 
doors  so  that  the  soldiers  might  not  see  what 
was  going  forward,  he  thanked  us  with  such 
grateful  politeness  that  he  made  me  feel  rather 
ashamed  of  myself ;  for  my  interest  in  the  matter 
up  to  that  point  had  not  been  a  very  serious  or 
a  high  one.  Indeed,  I  did  not  even  know  the 
gentleman's  name.  But  as  we  did  not  know  the 
names  of  the  government  people  against  whom 
he  was  plotting  either,  we  felt  that  we  could  not 
be  accused  of  partiality. 

The  prisoner  did  not  want  his  wife  to  know 
what  had  happened,  and  so  sent  her  word  that 
important  legal  business  would  detain  him  at 
the  office,  and  that  his  dinner  was  to  be  brought 
to  him  there.  The  rope  by  which  he  was  to 
escape  was  smuggled  past  the  soldiers  under  the 
napkin  which  covered  this  dinner.  It  was  then 
seven  o'clock  and  nearly  dark,  and  as  our  rebel 


2l6          THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

friend  feared  our  presence  might  excite  suspicion, 
he  asked  us  to  go  away,  and  requested  us  to  re- 
turn in  half  an  hour.  It  would  then  be  quite 
dark,  and  the  attempt  to  escape  could  be  made 
with  greater  safety. 

But  the  alcalde  during  our  absence  spoiled 
what  might  have  been  an  excellent  story  by 
rushing  in  and  carrying  the  diplomat  off  to  jail. 
When  we  returned  we  found  the  office  locked 
and  guarded,  and  as  we  walked  away,  in  doubt 
as  to  whether  he  had  escaped  or  had  been  ar- 
rested, we  found  that  the  soldiers  were  following 
us.  As  this  continued  throughout  the  evening 
we  went  across  the  isthmus  the  next  morning 
to  Colon,  the  same  soldiers  accompanying  us  on 
our  way. 

The  ship  of  war  Atlanta  was  at  Colon,  and  as 
we  had  met  her  officers  at  Puerto  Cortez,  in  Hon- 
duras, we  went  on  board  and  asked  them  to  see 
that  we  were  not  shot  against  church  walls  or 
hung.  They  were  exceedingly  amused,  and 
promised  us  ample  protection,  and  though  we 
did  not  need  it  on  that  occasion,  I  was  impressed 
with  the  comforting  sense  that  comes  to  a  trav- 
eller from  the  States  when  he  knows  that  one 
of  our  White  Squadron  is  rolling  at  anchor  in 
the  harbor.  And  later,  when  Griscom  caught 
the  Chagrcs  fever,  we  had  every  reason  to  be 
grateful  for  the  presence  in  the  harbor  of  the 
Atlanta,  as  her  officers,  led  by  Dr.  Bartolette  and 


ON   THE    ISTHMUS   OF   PANAMA  219 

his  assistant  surgeon,  Mr.  Moore,  helped  him 
through  his  sickness,  visiting  him  daily  with  the 
greatest  kindness  and  good-will. 

Colon  did  not  impress  us  very  favorably.  It 
is  a  large  town  of  wooden  houses,  with  a  floating 
population  of  Jamaica  negroes  and  a  few  Chinese. 
The  houses  built  for  the  engineers  of  the  canal 
stretch  out  along  a  point  at  either  side  of  a 
double  row  of  magnificent  palms,  which  termi- 
nate at  the  residence  intended  for  De  Lesseps. 
It  is  now  falling  into  decay.  In  front  of  it, 
facing  the  sea,  is  a  statue  of  Columbus  protect- 
ing the  Republic  of  Colombia,  represented  by 
an  Indian  girl,  whp  is  crouching  under  his  out- 
stretched arm.  This  monument  was  presented 
to  the  United  States  of  Colombia  by  the  Em- 
press Eugeuie,  and  the  statue  is,  in  its  fallen 
state,  with  its  pedestal  shattered  by  the  many 
storms  and  time,  significant  of  the  fallen  fort- 
unes of  that  great  lady  herself.  If  Columbus 
could  have  protected  Colombia  from  the  French 
as  he  is  in  the  French  statue  protecting  her 
from  all  the  world,  she  would  now  be  the  rich- 
est and  most  important  of  Central-American  re- 
publics. 

Colon  seems  to  be  owned  entirely  by  the  Pan- 
ama Railroad  Company,  a  monopoly  that  con- 
ducts its  affairs  with  even  more  disregard  for 
the  public  than  do  other  monopolies  in  better- 
known  localities.  The  company  makes  use  of 


220          THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

the  seaport  as  a  freight-yard,  and  its  locomo- 
tives run  the  length  of  the  town  throughout  the 
entire  day,  blowing  continually  on  their  whistles 
and  ringing  their  bells,  so  that  there  is  little 
peace  for  the  just  or  the  unjust.  We  were  ex- 
ceedingly relieved  when  the  doctors  agreed  that 
Griscom  was  ready  to  put  to  sea  again,  and  we 
were  able  to  turn  from  the  scene  of  the  great 
scandal  and  its  fever  fields  to  the  mountains  of 
Venezuela,  and  of  Caracas  in  particular. 


THE   PARIS   OF   SOUTH    AMERICA 


1HOVED  off  by  itself  in  a  corner  of 
Central  Park  on  the  top  of  a  wooded 
hill,  where  only  the  people  who  live 
in  the  high  apartment  -  houses  at 
Eighty-first  Street  can  see  it,  is  an  equestrian 
statue.  It  is  odd,  bizarre,  and  inartistic,  and  sug- 
gests in  size  and  pose  that  equestrian  statue  to 
General  Jackson  which  mounts  guard  before  the 
White  House  in  Washington.  It  shows  a  choc- 
olate-cream soldier  mastering  with  one  hand  a 
rearing  rocking-horse,  and  with  the  other  point- 
ing his  sword  towards  an  imaginary  enemy. 

Sometimes  a  "sparrow"  policeman  saunters 
up  the  hill  and  looks  at  the  statue  with  unen- 
lightened eyes,  and  sometimes  a  nurse -maid 
seeks  its  secluded  site,  and  sits  on  the  pedestal 
below  it  while  the  children  of  this  free  republic 
play  unconcernedly  in  its  shadow.  On  the  base 
of  this  big  statue  is  carved  the  name  of  Simon 
Bolivar,  the  Liberator  of  Venezuela. 


222  THREE    GFiNGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

Down  on  the  northeastern  coast  of  South 
America,  in  Caracas,  the  capital  of  the  United 
States  of  Venezuela,  there  is  a  pretty  little  plaza, 
called  the  Plaza  Washington.  It  is  not  at  all 
an  important  plaza;  it  is  not  floored  for  hun- 
dreds of  yards  with  rare  mosaics  like  the  Plaza 
de  Bolivar,  nor  lit  by  swinging  electric  lights, 
and  the  president's  band  never  plays  there.  But 
it  has  a  fresh  prettiness  and  restfulness  all  its 
own,  and  the  narrow  gravel  paths  are  clean  and 
trim,  and  the  grass  grows  rich  and  high,  and  the 
branches  of  the  trees  touch  and  interlace  and 
form  a  green  roof  over  all,  except  in  the  very 
centre,  where  there  stands  open  to  the  blue  sky 
a  statue  of  Washington,  calm,  dignified,  benefi- 
cent, and  paternal.  It  is  Washington  the  states- 
man, not  the  soldier.  The  sun  of  the  tropics 
beats  down  upon  his  shoulders ;  the  palms  rus- 
tle and  whisper  pleasantly  above  his  head.  From 
the  barred  windows  of  the  yellow  and  blue  and 
pink  houses  that  line  the  little  plaza  dark-eyed, 
dark-skinned  women  look  out  sleepily,  but  un- 
derstandingly,  at  the  grave  face  of  the  North 
American  Bolivar;  and  even  the  policeman,  with 
his  red  blanket  and  Winchester  carbine,  compre- 
hends when  the  gringos  stop  and  take  off  their 
hats  and  make  a  low  bow  to  the  father  of  their 
country  in  his  pleasant  place  of  exile. 

Other  governments  than  those  of  the  United 
States  of  America  and  the  United  States  of 


STATUE   OF   SIMON   BOLIVAR,   CARACAS 


THE    PARIS    OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  225 

Venezuela  have  put  up  statues  to  their  great 
men  in  foreign  capitals,  but  the  careers  of  Wash- 
ington and  Bolivar  bear  so  striking  a  resem- 
blance, and  the  histories  of  the  two  countries 
of  which  they  are  the  respective  fathers  are  so 
much  alike,  that  they  might  be  written  in  parallel 
columns.  And  so  it  seems  especially  appro- 
priate that  these  monuments  to  these  patriots 
should  stand  in  each  of  the  two  continents  on 
either  side  of  the  dividing  states  of  Central 
America. 

It  will  offend  no  true  Venezuelan  to-day  if  it 
be  said  of  his  country  that  the  most  interesting 
man  in  it  is  a  dead  one,  for  he  will  allow  no  one 
to  go  further  than  himself  in  his  admiration  for 
Bolivar ;  and  he  has  done  so  much  to  keep  his 
memory  fresh  by  circulating  portraits  of  him  on 
every  coin  and  stamp  of  the  country,  by  placing 
his  statue  at  every  corner,  and  by  hanging  his 
picture  in  every  house,  that  he  cannot  blame 
the  visitor  if  his  strongest  impression  of  Vene- 
zuela is  of  the  young  man  who  began  at  thirty- 
three  to  liberate  five  republics,  and  who  con- 
quered a  territory  more  than  one-third  as  great 
as  the  whole  of  Europe. 

In  1811  Venezuela  declared  her  independence 
of  the  mother-country  of  Spain,  and  her  great 
men  put  this  declaration  in  writing  and  signed 
it,  and  the  room  in  which  it  was  signed  is  still 
kept  sacred,  as  is  the  room  where  our  declara- 
15 


226  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

tion  was  signed  in  Independence  Hall.  But  the 
two  men  who  were  to  make  these  declarations 
worth  something  more  than  the  parchment  upon 
which  they  were  written  were  not  among  the 
signers.  Their  work  was  still  to  come,  and  it 
was  much  the  same  kind  of  work,  and  carried 
on  in  much  the  same  spirit  of  indomitable  ener- 
gy under  the  most  cruel  difficulties,  and  with  a 
few  undrilled  troops  against  an  army  of  veter- 
ans. It  was  marked  by  brilliant  and  sudden 
marches  and  glorious  victories  ;  and  where  Wash- 
ington suffered  in  the  snows  of  Valley  Forge, 
or  pushed  his  way  through  the  floating  ice  of 
the  Delaware,  young  Bolivar  marched  under 
fierce  tropical  suns,  and  cut  his  path  through 
jungle  and  swamp-lands,  and  over  the  almost 
impenetrable  fastnesses  of  the  Andes. 

Their  difficulties  were  the  same  and  their  aim 
was  the  same,  but  the  characters  of  the  two  men 
were  absolutely  and  entirely  different,  for  Boli- 
var was  reckless,  impatient  of  advice,  and  even 
foolhardy.  What  Washington  was  we  know. 

The  South-American  came  of  a  distinguished 
Spanish  family,  and  had  been  educated  as  a 
courtier  and  as  a  soldier  in  the  mother-country, 
though  his  heart  remained  always  with  his  own 
people,  and  he  was  among  the  first  to  take  up 
arms  to  set  them  free.  Unless  you  have  seen 
the  country  through  which  he  led  his  men,  and 
have  measured  the  mountains  he  climbed  with 


STATUE    OF    WASHINGTON    DECORATED    WITH    FLORAL    WREATHS 
BY   THE   VENEZUELANS 


THE   PARIS    OF   SOUTH   AMERICA  229 

his  few  followers,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  un- 
derstand the  immensity  of  the  task  he  accom- 
plished. Even  to-day  a  fast  steamer  cannot 
reach  Callao  from  Panama  under  seven  days, 
and  yet  Bolivar  made  the  same  distance  and  on 
foot,  starting  from  the  South  Atlantic,  and  con- 
tinuing on  across  the  continent  to  the  Pacific  side, 
and  then  on  down  the  coast  into  Peru,  living  on 
his  way  upon  roots  and  berries,  sleeping  on  the 
ground  wrapped  in  a  blanket,  riding  on  mule- 
back  or  climbing  the  steep  trail  on  foot,  and  free- 
ing on  his  way  Venezuela,  Colombia,  Ecuador, 
Bolivia,  and  finally  Peru,  the  home  of  the  Incas. 
The  history  of  this  campaign  is  one  too  glori- 
ous and  rich  in  incident  and  color  to  be  crowded 
into  a  few  pages,  and  the  character  of  its  chief 
actor  too  varied,  and  his  rise  and  fall  too  dra- 
matic, to  be  dismissed,  as  it  must  be  here,  in  a 
few  paragraphs.  But  every  American  who  loves 
a  hero  and  who  loves  a  lover — and  Bolivar  was 
very  much  of  both,  and  perhaps  too  much  of  the 
latter — should  read  the  life  of  this  young  man 
who  freed  a  country  rich  in  brave  men,  who 
made  some  of  these  who  were  much  his  senior 
in  years  his  lieutenants,  and  who,  after  risking 
his  life  upon  many  battle-fields  and  escaping 
several  attempts  at  assassination,  died  at  last 
deserted  except  by  a  few  friends,  and  with  a 
heart  broken  by  the  ingratitude  of  the  people 
he  had  led  out  of  captivity. 


230  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

It  is  difficult  to  find  out,  even  in  his  own 
country,  why  the  Venezuelans,  after  heaping 
Bolivar  with  honors  and  elevating  him  to  the 
place  of  a  god,  should  have  turned  against  him, 
and  driven  him  into  exile  at  Santa  Marta.  Some 
will  tell  you  that  he  tried  to  make  himself  dicta- 
tor over  the  countries  which  he  had  freed  ;  others 
say  that  it  was  because  he  had  refused  to  be  a 
dictator  that  the  popular  feeling  went  against 
him,  and  that  when  the  people  in  the  madness 
of  their  new-found  freedom  cried,  "Thou  hast 
rid  us  of  kings;  be  thou  king,"  he  showed  them 
their  folly,  and  sought  his  old  home,  and  died 
there  before  the  reaction  came,  which  was  to 
sweep  him  back  once  more  and  forever  into  the 
place  of  the  popular  hero  of  South  America. 

It  was  sixteen  years  after  his  death  that  a 
hero-worshipping  friend  was  brave  enough  to 
commission  an  artist  to  design  a  statue  to  his 
rnemory.  On  the  neck  of  this  statue  the  artist 
hung  the  representation  of  a  miniature  in  the 
shape  of  a  medallion,  which  had  been  given  to 
Bolivar  by  the  family  of  Washington.  On  the 
reverse  was  a  lock  of  Washington's  hair  and  the 
inscription,  "  This  portrait  of  the  founder  of 
liberty  in  North  America  is  presented  by  his 
adopted  son  to  him  who  has  acquired  equal 
glory  in  South  America." 

Some  one  asked  why  the  artist  had  stripped 
from  the  breast  of  Bolivar  all  of  the  other 


DECORATION   OF    THE    STATUE    OF    BOLIVAR    AT    CARACAS,  VENE- 
ZUELA, DECEMBER    l8,   1895,  BY   AMERICAN   RESIDENTS 


THE    PARIS    OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  233 

medals  and  stars  that  had  been  given  him  by 
different  countries  in  the  hour  of  his  triumph, 
and  the  artist  answered  that  he  had  done  as  his 
patron  and  the  friend  of  Bolivar  thought  would 
best  please  his  hero.  And  ever  after  that  it  was 
decreed  that  every  bust  or  statue  or  engraving 
of  the  Liberator  should  show  him  with  this 
portrait  of  Washington  hanging  by  a  ribbon 
about  his  neck ;  and  so  you  will  see  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  that  while  the  coats 
of  his  lieutenants  glitter  with  orders  and  cross- 
es, Bolivar's  bears  this  medal  only.  It  was  his 
greatest  pride,  and  he  considered  it  his  chief 
glory.  And  the  manner  of  its  bestowal  was 
curiously  appropriate.  In  1824  General  Lafay- 
ette returned  to  this  country  as  the  guest  of 
the  nation,  and  a  banquet  was  given  to  him  by 
Congress,  at  which  the  memory  of  Washington 
and  the  deeds  of  his  French  lieutenant  were 
honored  again  and  again.  It  was  while  the 
enthusiasm  and  rejoicings  of  this  celebration 
were  at  their  height  that  Henry  Clay  rose  in 
his  place  and  asked  the  six  hundred  Americans 
before  him  to  remember  that  while  they  were 
enjoying  the  benefits  of  free  institutions  founded 
by  the  bravery  and  patriotism  of  their  fore- 
fathers, their  cousins  and  neighbors  in  the  south- 
ern continent  were  struggling  to  obtain  that  same 
independence. 

"  No  nation,  no  generous  Lafayette,"  he  cried, 


234 


THREE   GRINOOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 


"has  come  to  their  aid;  alone  and  without  help 
they  have  sustained  their  glorious  cause,  trusting 
to  its  justice,  and  with  the  assistance  only  of 


their  bravery,  their  deserts,  and  their  Andes — 
and  one  man,  Simon  Bolivar,  the  Washington  of 
South  America." 

And  you  can  imagine  the  six  hundred  Ameri- 
cans  jumping   to    their    feet   and   cheering   the 


THE    PARIS   OF    SOUTH   AMERICA  237 

name  of  the  young  soldier,  and  the  French 
marquis  eagerly  asking  that  he  might  be  the  one 
to  send  him  some  token  of  their  sympathy  and 
admiration.  Lafayette  forwarded  the  portrait 
of  Washington  to  Bolivar,  who  valued  it  so 
highly  that  the  people  who  loved  him  valued 
the  man  he  worshipped ;  and  to-day  you  will  see 
in  Caracas  streets  and  squares  and  houses  named 
after  Washington,  and  portraits  of  Washington 
crossing  the  Delaware,  and  Washington  on  horse- 
back, and  Washington  at  Mount  Vernon,  hang- 
ing in  almost  every  shop  and  cafe  in  the  capital. 
And  the  next  time  you  ride  in  Central  Park  you 
might  turn  your  bicycle,  or  tell  the  man  on  the 
box  to  turn  the  horses,  into  that  little  curtain  of 
trees,  and  around  the  hill  where  the  odd-looking 
statue  stands,  and  see  if  you  cannot  feel  some 
sort  of  sympathy  and  pay  some  tribute  to  this 
young  man  who  loved  like  a  hero,  and  who 
fought  like  a  hero,  with  the  fierceness  of  the 
tropical  sun  above  him,  and  whose  inspiration 
was  the  calm,  grave  parent  of  your  own  country. 

Bolivar's  country  is  the  republic  of  South 
America  that  stands  nearest  to  New  York,  and 
when  people  come  to  know  more  concerning  it, 
I  am  sure  they  will  take  to  visiting  it  and  its 
capital,  the  "  Paris  of  South  America,"  in  the 
winter  months,  as  they  now  go  to  southern  Eu- 
rope or  to  the  Mediterranean. 

There  are  many  reasons  for  their  doing  so. 


238          THREE  GRINGOS   IN   CENTRAL   AMERICA 

In  the  first  place,  it  can  be  reached  in  less  than 
six  days,  and  it  is  the  only  part  of  South  Amer- 
ica to  which  one  can  go  without  first  crossing 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama  and  then  taking  a  long 
trip  down  the  western  coast,  or  sailing  for  nearly 
a  month  along  the  eastern  coast ;  and  it  is  a 
wonderfully  beautiful  country,  and  its  cities  of 
Caracas  and  Valencia  are  typical  of  the  best 
South -American  cities.  When  you  have  seen 
them  you  have  an  intelligent  idea  of  what  the 
others  are  like ;  and  when  you  read  about  rev- 
olutions in  Rio  Janeiro,  or  Valparaiso,  or  Buenos 
Ayres,  you  will  have  in  your  mind's  eye  the 
background  for  all  of  these  dramatic  uprisings, 
and  you  will  feel  superior  to  other  people  who 
do  not  know  that  the  republic  of  Venezuela  is 
larger  than  France,  Spain,  and  Portugal  together, 
and  that  the  inhabitants  of  this  great  territory 
are  less  in  number  than  those  of  New  York  city. 
La  Guayra  is  the  chief  seaport  of  Venezuela. 
It  lies  at  the  edge  of  a  chain  of  great  mountains, 
where  they  come  down  to  wet  their  feet  in  the 
ocean,  and  Caracas,  the  capital,  is  stowed  away 
three  thousand  feet  higher  up  behind  these 
mountains,  and  could  only  be  bombarded  in 
time  of  war  by  shells  that  would  rise  like  rockets 
and  drop  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountains, 
and  so  cover  a  distance  quite  nine  miles  away 
from  the  vessel  that  fired  them.  Above  La 
Guayra,  on  the  hill,  is  a  little  fortress  which  was 


THE   RAILROAD   UP   THE   MOUNTAIN 


THE   PARIS    OF   SOUTH    AMERICA  241 

once  the  residence  of  the  Spanish  governor 
when  Venezuela  was  a  colony  of  Spain.  It  is  of 
interest  now  chiefly  because  Charles  Kingsley 
describes  it  in  Westward  Ho !  as  the  fortress  in 
which  the  Rose  of  Devon  was  imprisoned.  Past 
this  fortress,  and  up  over  the  mountains  to  the 
capital,  are  a  mule -trail  and  an  ancient  wagon- 
road  and  a  modern  railway. 

It  is  a  very  remarkable  railroad  ;  its  tracks  cling 
to  the  perpendicular  surface  of  the  mountain  like 
the  tiny  tendrils  of  a  vine  on  a  stone-wall,  and 
the  trains  creep  and  crawl  along  the  edge  of  its 
precipices,  or  twist  themselves  into  the  shape  of 
a  horseshoe  magnet,  so  that  the  engineer  on  the 
locomotive  can  look  directly  across  a  bottomless 
chasm  into  the  windows  of  the  last  car.  The 
view  from  this  train,  while  it  pants  and  puffs  on 
its  way  to  the  capital,  is  the  most  beautiful  com- 
bination of  sea  and  plain  and  mountain  that  I 
have  ever  seen.  There  are  higher  mountains  and 
more  beautiful^  perhaps,  but  they  run  into  a 
brown  prairie  or  into  a  green  plain  ;  and  there 
are  as  beautiful  views  of  the  ocean,  only  you  have 
to  see  them  from  the  level  of  the  ocean  itself,  or 
from  a  chalk-cliff  with  the  downs  behind  you  and 
the  white  sand  at  your  feet.  But  nowhere  else 
in  the  world  have  I  seen  such  magnificent  and 
noble  mountains  running  into  so  beautiful  and 
green  a  plain,  and  beyond  that  the  great  blue 
stretches  of  the  sea.  When  you  look  down  from 
16 


242  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

the  car -platform  you  see  first,  stretching  three 
thousand  feet  below  you,  the  great  green  ribs  of 
the  mountain  and  its  valleys  and  waterways  lead- 
ing into  a  plain  covered  with  thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  royal  palms,  set  so  far  apart  that  you 
can  distinguish  every  broad  leaf  and  the  full 
length  of  the  white  trunk.  Among  these  are  the 
red-roofed  and  yellow  villages,  and  beyond  them 
again  the  white  line  of  breakers  disappearing  and 
reappearing  against  the  blue  as  though  some  one 
were  wiping  out  a  chalk -line  and  drawing  it  in 
again,  and  then  the  great  ocean  weltering  in  the 
heat  and  stretching  as  far  as  the  eye  can  see,  and 
touching  a  sky  so  like  it  in  color  that  the  two  are 
joined  in  a  curtain  of  blue  on  which  the  ships 
seem  to  lie  flat,  like  painted  pictures  on  a  wall. 
You  pass  through  clouds  on  your  way  up  that 
leave  the  trees  and  rocks  along  the  track  damp 
and  shining  as  after  a  heavy  dew,  and  at  some 
places  you  can  peer  through  them  from  the  steps 
of  the  car  down  a  straight  fall  of  three  thousand 
feet.  When  you  have  climbed  to  the  top  of  the 
mountain,  you  see  below  you  on  the  other  side 
the  beautiful  valley  in  which  lies  the  city  of  Cara- 
cas, cut  up  evenly  by  well-kept  streets,  and  diversi- 
fied by  the  towers  of  churches  and  public  build- 
ings and  open  plazas,  with  the  white  houses  and 
gardens  of  the  coffee -planters  lying  beyond  the 
city  at  the  base  of  the  mountains. 

Venezuela,  after   our   experiences  of  Central 


THE   PARIS   OF   SOUTH   AMERICA  245 

America,  was  like  a  return  to  civilization  after 
months  on  the  alkali  plains  of  Texas.  We  found 
Caracas  to  be  a  Spanish-American  city  of  the  first 
class,  with  a  suggestion  of  the  boulevards,  and 
Venezuela  a  country  that  possessed  a  history  of 
her  own,  and  an  Academy  of  wise  men  and  ar- 
tists, and  a  Pantheon  for  her  heroes.  I  suppose 
we  should  have  known  that  this  was  so  before  we 
visited  Venezuela ;  but  as  we  did  not,  we  felt  as 
though  we  were  discovering  a  new  country  for 
ourselves.  It  was  interesting  to  find  statues  of 
men  of  whom  none  of  us  had  ever  heard,  and 
who  were  distinguished  for  something  else  than 
military  successes,  men  who  had  made  discoveries 
in  science  and  medicine,  and  who  had  written 
learned  books ;  to  find  the  latest  devices  for 
comfort  of  a  civilized  community,  and  with  them 
the  records  of  a  fierce  struggle  for  independence, 
a  long  period  of  disorganization,  where  the 
Church  had  the  master-hand,  and  then  a  rapid 
advance  in  the  habits  and  customs  of  enlight- 
ened nations.  There  are  the  most  curious  com- 
binations and  contrasts,  showing  on  one  side  a 
pride  of  country  and  an  eagerness  to  emulate 
the  customs  of  stable  governments,  and  on  the 
other  evidences  of  the  Southern  hot-blooded  tem- 
perament and  dislike  of  restraint. 

On  the  corner  of  the  principal  plaza  stands  the 
cathedral,  with  a  tower.  Ten  soldiers  took  ref- 
uge in  this  tower  four  years  ago,  during  the  last 


246  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

revolution,  and  they  made  so  determined  a  fight 
from  that  point  of  vantage  that  in  order  to  dis- 
lodge them  it  was  found  necessary  to  build  a  fire 
in  the  tower  and  smoke  them  out  with  the  fumes 
of  sulphur.  These  ten  soldiers  were  the  last  to 
make  a  stand  within  the  city,  and  when  they  fell, 
from  the  top  of  the  tower,  smothered  to  death, 
the  revolution  was  at  an  end.  This  incident  of 
warfare  is  of  value  when  you  contrast  the  thing 
done  with  its  environment,  and  know  that  next 
to  the  cathedral -tower  are  confectionery -shops 
such  as  you  find  on  Regent  Street  or  upper 
Broadway,  that  electric  lights  surround  the  ca- 
thedral, and  that  tram-cars  run  past  it  on  rails 
sunk  below  the  surface  of  the  roadway  and  over 
a  better  street  than  any  to  be  found  in  New  York 
city. 

Even  without  acquaintances  among  the  people 
of  the  capital  there  are  enough  public  show-places 
in  Caracas  to  entertain  a  stranger  for  a  fortnight. 
It  is  pleasure  enough  to  walk  the  long,  narrow 
streets  under  brilliantly  colored  awnings,  between 
high  one  and  two  story  houses,  painted  in  blues 
and  pinks  and  greens,  and  with  overhanging  red- 
tiled  roofs  and  projecting  iron  balconies  and  open 
iron  -  barred  windows,  through  which  you  gain 
glimpses  beyond  of  cool  interiors  and  beautiful 
courts  and  gardens  filled  with  odd-looking  plants 
around  a  splashing  fountain. 

The  ladies  of  Caracas  seem  to  spend  much  of 


THE   PARIS   OF   SOUTH    AMERICA  249 

their  time  sitting  at  these  windows,  and  are  al- 
ways there  in  the  late  afternoons,  when  they 
dress  themselves  and  arrange  their  hair  for  the 
evening,  and  put  a  little  powder  on  their  faces, 
and  take  their  places  in  the  cushioned  window- 
seats  as  though  they  were  in  their  box  at  the  op- 
era. And  though  they  are  within  a  few  inches 
of  the  passers-by  on  the  pavement,  they  can  look 
through  them  and  past  them,  and  are  as  oblivious 
of  their  presence  as  though  they  were  invisible. 
In  the  streets  are  strings  of  mules  carrying  bags 
of  coffee  or  buried  beneath  bales  of  fodder,  and 
jostled  by  open  fiacres,  with  magnificent  coach- 
men on  the  box-seat  in  top-boots  and  gold 
trimmings  to  their  hats  and  coats,  and  many  sol- 
diers, on  foot  and  mounted,  hurrying  along  at  a 
quick  step  in  companies,  or  strolling  leisurely 
alone.  They  wear  blue  uniforms  with  scarlet 
trousers  and  facings,  and  the  president's  body- 
guard are  in  white  duck  and  high  black  boots, 
and  are  mounted  on  magnificent  horses. 

There  are  three  great  buildings  in  Caracas — 
the  Federal  Palace,  the  Opera-house,  and  the  Pan- 
theon, which  was  formerly  a  church,  and  which 
has  been  changed  into  a  receiving-vault  and  a  me- 
morial for  the  great  men  of  the  country.  Here, 
after  three  journeys,  the  bones  of  Bolivar  now 
rest.  The  most  interesting  of  these  buildings  is 
the  Federal  Palace.  It  is  formed  around  a  great 
square  filled  with  flowers  and  fountains,  and  lit 


250  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

with  swinging  electric  lights.  It  is  the  handsom- 
est building  in  Caracas,  and  within  its  four  sides 
are  the  chambers  of  the  upper  and  lower  branch- 
es of  the  legislature,  the  offices  of  the  different 
departments  of  state,  and  the  reception-hall  of 
the  president,  in  which  is  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery.  The  palace  is  light  and  unsubstantial- 
looking,  like  a  canvas  palace  in  a  theatre,  and 
suggests  the  casino  at  a  French  watering-place. 
It  is  painted  in  imitation  of  stone,  and  the  stat- 
ues are  either  of  plaster- of- paris  or  of  wood, 
painted  white  to  represent  marble.  But  the  the- 
atrical effect  is  in  keeping  with  the  colored  walls 
and  open  fronts  of  the  other  buildings  of  the  city, 
and  is  not  out  of  place  in  this  city  of  such  dra- 
matic incidents. 

The  portraits  in  the  state-room  of  the  palace 
immortalize  the  features  of  fierce-looking,  dark- 
faced  generals,  with  old-fashioned  high-standing 
collars  of  gold-braid,  and  green  uniforms.  Strange 
and  unfamiliar  names  are  printed  beneath  these 
portraits,  and  appear  again  painted  in  gold  let- 
ters on  a  roll  of  honor  which  hangs  from  the  ceil- 
ing, and  which  faces  a  list  of  the  famous  battles 
for  independence.  High  on  this  roll  of  honor 
are  the  names  "  General  O'Leary  "  and  "  Colo- 
nel Fergurson,"  and  among  the  portraits  are  the 
faces  of  two  blue-eyed,  red-haired  young  men, 
with  fair  skin  and  broad  chests  and  shoulders, 
one  wearing  the  close  -  clipped  whiskers  of  the 


PRESIDENT   CRESPO,  OF  VENEZUELA 


THE    PARIS    OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  253 

last  of  the  Georges,  and  the  other  the  long  Dun- 
dreary whiskers  of  the  Crimean  wars.  Whether 
the  Irish  general  and  the  English  colonel  gave 
their  swords  for  the  sake  of  the  cause  of  inde- 
pendence or  fought  for  the  love  of  fighting,  I  do 


LEGISLATIVE  BUILDING,  CARACAS 

not  know,  but  they  won  the  love  of  the  Spanish- 
Americans  by  the  service  they  rendered,  no  mat- 
ter what  their  motives  may  have  been  for  serving. 
Many  people  tell  you  proudly  that  they  are  de- 
scended from  "  O'Leari,"  and  the  names  of  the 
two  foreigners  are  as  conspicuous  on  pedestals 
and  tablets  of  honor  as  are  their  smiling  blue 


254  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

eyes  and  red  cheeks  among  the  thin  -  visaged, 
dark-skinned  faces  of  their  brothers-in-arms. 
.  At  one  end  of  the  room  is  an  immense  paint- 
ing of  a  battle,  and  the  other  is  blocked  by  as 
large  a  picture  showing  Bolivar  dictating  to  mem- 
bers of  Congress,  who  have  apparently  ridden  out 
into  the  field  to  meet  him,  and  are  holding  an 
impromptu  session  beneath  the  palm  leaves  of 
an  Indian  hut.  The  dome  of  the  chamber, 
which  latter  is  two  hundred  feet  in  length,  is 
covered  with  an  immense  panorama,  excellently 
well  done,  showing  the  last  of  the  battles  of  the 
Venezuelans  against  the  Spaniards,  in  which  the 
figures  are  life-size  and  the  action  most  spirited, 
and  the  effect  of  color  distinctly  decorative. 
These  paintings  in  the  National  Gallery  would 
lead  you  to  suppose  that  there  was  nothing  but 
battles  in  the  history  of  Venezuela,  and  that  her 
great  men  were  all  soldiers,  but  the  talent  of  the 
artists  who  have  painted  these  scenes  and  the 
actors  in  them  corrects  the  idea.  Among  these 
artists  are  Arturo  Michelena,  who  has  exhibited 
at  the  World's  Fair,  and  frequently  at  the  French 
Salon,  from  which  institution  he  has  received  a 
prize,  M.  Tovar  y  Tovar,  A.  Herrea  Toro,  and 
Cristobal  Rojas. 

It  was  that  "Illustrious  American,  Guzman 
Blanco,"  one  of  the  numerous  presidents  of  Ven- 
ezuela, and  probably  the  best  known,  who  was 
responsible  for  most  of  the  public  buildings  of 


'         A 


THE    PARIS    OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  257 

the  capital.  These  were  originally  either  con- 
vents or  monasteries,  which  he  converted,  after 
his  war  with  the  Church,  into  the  Federal  Pal- 
ace, the  Opera-house,  and  a  university.  Each  of 
these  structures  covers  so  much  valuable  ground, 
and  is  situated  so  advantageously  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  city,  that  one  gets  a  very  good  idea 
of  how  powerful  the  Church  element  must  have 
been  before  Guzman  overthrew  it. 

He  was  a  peculiar  man,  apparently,  and  pos- 
sessed of  much  force  and  of  a  progressive  spirit, 
combined  with  an  overmastering  vanity.  The 
city  was  at  its  gayest  under  his  regime,  and  he 
encouraged  the  arts  and  sciences  by  creating  va- 
rious bodies  of  learned  men,  by  furnishing  the 
nucleus  for  a  national  museum,  by  subsidizing 
the  Opera-house,  and  by  granting  concessions 
to  foreign  companies  which  were  of  quite  too 
generous  a  nature  to  hold  good,  and  which  now 
greatly  encumber  and  embarrass  his  successors. 
But  while  he  was  president,  and  before  he 
went  to  live  in  luxurious  exile  on  the  Avenue 
Kleber,  which  seems  to  be  the  resting-place  of 
all  South  American  presidents,  he  did  much  to 
make  the  country  prosperous  and  its  capital  at- 
tractive, and  he  was  determined  that  the  people 
should  know  that  he  was  the  individual  who  ac- 
complished these  things.  With  this  object  he 
had  fifteen  statues  erected  to  himself  in  different 
parts  of  the  city,  and  more  tablets  than  one  can 


258  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

count.  Each  statue  bore  an  inscription  telling 
that  it  was  erected  to  that  "  Illustrious  Ameri- 
can, Guzman  Blanco,"  and  every  new  bridge  and 
road  and  public  building  bore  a  label  to  say  that 
it  was  Guzman  Blanco  who  was  responsible  for 
its  existence.  The  idea  of  a  man  erecting  stat- 
ues to  himself  struck  the  South-American  mind 
as  extremely  humorous,  and  one  night  all  the 
statues  were  sawed  off  at  the  ankles,  and  to-day 
there  is  not  one  to  be  seen,  and  only  raw  places 
in  the  walls  to  show  where  the  memorial  tablets 
hung.  But  you  cannot  wipe  out  history  by  pull- 
ing down  columns  or  effacing  inscriptions,  and 
Guzman  Blanco  undoubtedly  did  do  much  for 
his  country,  even  though  at  the  same  time  he 
was  doing  a  great  deal  for  Guzman  Blanco. 

Guzman  was  followed  in  rapid  succession  by 
three  or  four  other  presidents  and  dictators,  who 
filled  their  pockets  with  millions  and  then  fled 
the  country,  only  waiting  until  their  money  was 
first  safely  out  of  it.  Then  General  Crespo,  who 
had  started  his  revolution  with  seven  men,  final- 
ly overthrew  the  government's  forces,  and  was 
elected  president,  and  has  remained  in  office 
ever  since.  To  set  forth  with  seven  followers  to 
make  yourself  president  of  a  country  as  large  as 
France,  Portugal,  and  Spain  together  requires  a 
great  deal  of  confidence  and  courage.  General 
Crespo  is  a  fighter,  and  possesses  both.  It  was 
either  he  or  one  of  his  generals — the  story  is  told 


THE    PARIS   OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  261 

of  both  —  who,  when  he  wanted  arms  for  his 
cowboys,  bade  them  take  off  their  shirts  and 
grease  their  bodies  and  rush  through  the  camp  of 
the  enemy  in  search  of  them.  He  told  them  to 
hold  their  left  hands  out  as  they  ran,  and  when- 
ever their  fingers  slipped  on  a  greased  body  they 
were  to  pass  it  by,  but  when  they  touched  a  man 
wearing  a  shirt  they  were  to  cut  him  down  with 
their  machetes.  In  this  fashion  three  hundred 
of  his  plainsmen  routed  two  thousand  of  the  reg- 
ular troops,  and  captured  all  of  their  rifles  and 
ammunition.  The  idea  that  when  you  want 
arms  the  enemy  is  the  best  person  from  whom 
to  take  them  is  excellent  logic,  and  that  charge 
of  the  half -naked  men,  armed  only  with  their 
knives,  through  the  sleeping  camp  is  Homeric 
in  its  magnificence. 

Crespo  is  more  at  home  when  fighting  in  the 
field  than  in  the  council-chamber  of  the  Yellow 
House,  which  is  the  White  House  of  the  repub- 
lic ;  but  that  may  be  because  he  prefers  fight- 
ing to  governing,  and  a  man  generally  does  best 
what  he  likes  best  to  do.  He  is  as  simple  in  his 
habits  to-day  as  when  he  was  on  the  march  with 
his  seven  revolutionists,  and  goes  to  bed  at  eight 
in  the  evening,  and  is  deep  in  public  business  by 
four  the  next  morning;  many  an  unhappy  min- 
ister has  been  called  to  an  audience  at  sunrise. 
The  president  neither  smokes  nor  drinks ;  he  is 
grave  and  dignified,  with  that  dignity  which  enor- 


262          THREE   GRINGOS    IN   CENTRAL   AMERICA 

mous  size  gives,  and  his  greatest  pleasure  is  to 
take  a  holiday  and  visit  his  ranch,  where  he  watch- 
es the  round-up  of  his  cattle  and  gallops  over  his 
thousands  of  acres.  He  is  the  idol  of  the  cow- 
boys, and  has  a  body-guard  composed  of  some  of 
the  men  of  this  class.  I  suppose  they  are  very 
much  like  our  own  cowboys,  but  the  citizens  of 
the  capital  look  upon  them  as  the  Parisians  re- 
garded Napoleon's  Mamelukes,  and  tell  you  in 
perfect  sincerity  that  when  they  charge  at  night 
their  eyes  flash  fire  in  a  truly  terrifying  manner. 
I  saw  the  president  but  once,  and  then  but 
for  a  few  moments.  He  was  at  the  Yellow 
House  and  holding  a  public  reception,  to  which 
every  one  was  admitted  with  a  freedom  that  be- 
tokened absolute  democracy.  When  my  turn 
came  he  talked  awhile  through  Colonel  Bird, 
our  consul,  but  there  was  no  chance  for  me  to 
gain  any  idea  of  him  except  that  he  was  very 
polite,  as  are  all  Venezuelans,  and  very  large. 
They  tell  a  story  of  him  which  illustrates  his 
character.  He  was  riding  past  the  university 
when  a  group  of  students  hooted  and  jeered  at 
him,  not  because  of  his  politics,  but  because  of 
his  origin.  A  policeman  standing  by,  aroused  to 
indignation  by  this  insult  to  the  president,  fired 
his  revolver  into  the  crowd.  Crespo  at  once 
ordered  the  man's  arrest  for  shooting  at  a  citi- 
zen with  no  sufficient  provocation,  and  rode  on 
his  way  without  even  giving  a  glance  at  his  tor- 


THE   PARIS   OF   SOUTH   AMERICA  265 

mentors.  The  incident  seemed  to  show  that  he 
was  too  big  a  man  to  allow  the  law  to  be  broken 
even  in  his  own  defence,  or,  at  least,  big  enough 
not  to  mind  the  taunts  of  ill-bred  children. 

The  boys  of  the  university  are  taken  very  se- 
riously by  the  people  of  Caracas,  as  are  all  boys 
in  that  country,  where  a  child  is  listened  to,  if 
he  be  a  male  child,  with  as  much  grave  polite- 
ness as  though  it  were  a  veteran  who  was  speak- 
ing. The  effect  is  not  good,  and  the  boys,  espe- 
cially of  the  university,  grow  to  believe  that 
they  are  very  important  factors  in  the  affairs  of 
the  state,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are 
only  the  cat's-paws  of  clever  politicians,  who  use 
them  whenever  they  want  a  demonstration  and  do 
not  wish  to  appear  in  it  themselves.  So  these 
boys  are  sent  forth  shouting  into  the  streets,  and 
half  the  people  cheer  them  on,  and  the  children 
themselves  think  they  are  patriots  or  liberators, 
or  something  equally  important. 

I  obtained  a  rather  low  opinion  of  them 
because  they  stoned  an  unfortunate  American 
photographer  who  was  taking  pictures  in  the 
quadrangles,  and  because  I  was  so  far  interested 
in  them  as  to  get  a  friend  of  mine  to  translate 
for  me  the  sentences  and  verses  they  had  writ- 
ten over  the  walls  of  their  college.  The  verses 
were  of  a  political  character,  but  so  indecent  that 
the  interpreter  was  much  embarrassed  ;  the  sin- 
gle^ sentences  were  attacks,  anonymous,  of  course, 


266  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 

on  fellow-students.  As  the  students  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Venezuela  step  directly  from  college 
life  into  public  life,  their  training  is  of  some  in- 
terest and  importance.  And  I  am  sure  that  the 
Venezuelan  fathers  would  do  much  better  by 
their  sons  if  they  would  cease  to  speak  of  the 
university  in  awe-stricken  tones  as  "  the  hot- 
bed of  liberty,"  but  would  rather  take  away 
the  boys'  revolvers  and  teach  them  football,  and 
thrash  them  soundly  whenever  they  caught  them 
soiling  the  walls  of  their  alma  mater  with  nasty 
verses. 

There  are  some  beautiful  drives  around  Cara- 
cas, out  in  the  country  among  the  coffee  planta- 
tions, and  one  to  a  public  garden  that  overlooks 
the  city,  upon  which  President  Crespo  has  spent 
much  thought  and  money.  But  the  most  beau- 
tiful feature  of  Caracas,  and  one  that  no  person 
who  has  visited  that  place  will  ever  forget,  is  the 
range  of  mountains  above  it,  which  no  president 
can  improve.  They  are  smooth  and  bare  of 
trees  and  of  a  light -green  color,  except  in  the 
waterways,  where  there  are  lines  of  darker  green, 
and  the  clouds  change  their  aspect  continually, 
covering  them  with  shadows  or  floating  over 
them  from  valley  to  valley,  and  hovering  above 
a  high  peak  like  the  white  smoke  of  a  volcano. 

I  do  not  know  of  a  place  that  will  so  well  re- 
pay a  visit  as  Caracas,  or  a  country  that  is  so 
well  worth  exploring  as  Venezuela.  To  a  sports- 


THE    PARIS   OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  269 

man  it  is  a  paradise.  You  can  shoot  deer 
within  six  miles  of  the  Opera-house,  and  in  six 
hours  beyond  Macuto  you  can  kill  panther,  and 
as  many  wild  boars  as  you  wish.  No  country 
in  South  America  is  richer  in  such  natural  prod- 
ucts as  cocoa,  coffee,  and  sugar-cane.  And  in 
the  interior  there  is  a  vast  undiscovered  and 
untouched  territory  waiting  for  the  mining  en- 
gineer, the  professional  hunter,  and  the  breeder 
of  cattle. 

The  government  of  Venezuela  at  the  time  of 
our  visit  to  Caracas  was  greatly  troubled  on  ac- 
count of  her  boundary  dispute  with  Great  Britain, 
and  her  own  somewhat  hasty  action  in  sending 
three  foreign  ministers  out  of  the  country  for 
daring  to  criticise  her  tardiness  in  paying  foreign 
debts  and  her  neglect  in  not  holding  to  the  terms 
of  concessions.  These  difficulties,  the  latter  of 
which  were  entirely  of  her  own  making,  were  in- 
teresting to  us  as  Americans,  because  the  talk 
on  all  sides  showed  that  in  the  event  of  a  serious 
trouble  with  any  foreign  power  Venezuela  looked 
confidently  to  the  United  States  for  aid.  Now, 
since  President  Cleveland's  so-called  "  war  "  mes- 
sage has  been  written,  she  is  naturally  even  more 
liable  to  go  much  further  than  she  would  dare  go 
if  she  did  not  think  the  United  States  was  back 
of  her.  Her  belief  in  the  sympathy  of  our  govern- 
ment is  also  based  on  many  friendly  acts  in  the 
past :  on  the  facts  that  General  Miranda,  the  sol- 


27°          THREE   GRINGOS   IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

dier  who  preceded  Bolivar,  and  who  was  a  friend 
of  Hamilton,  Fox,  and  Lafayette,  first  learned 
to  hope  for  the  independence  of  South  America 
during  the  battle  for  independence  in  our  own 
country  ;  that  when  the  revolution  began,  in  1810, 
it  was  from  the  United  States  that  Venezuela 
received  her  first  war  material ;  that  two  years 
later,  when  the  earthquake  of  1812  destroyed 
twenty  thousand  people,  the  United  States  Con- 
gress sent  many  ship-loads  of  flour  to  the  sur- 
vivors of  the  disaster;  and  that  as  late  as  1888 
our  Congress  again  showed  its  good  feeling  by 
authorizing  the  secretary  of  the  navy  to  return 
to  Venezuela  on  a  ship  of  war  the  body  of  Gen- 
eral Paez,  who  died  in  exile  in  New  York  city, 
and  by  appointing  a  committee  of  congressmen 
and  senators  to  represent  the  government  at  his 
public  funeral. 

All  of  these  expressions  of  good-will  in  the 
past  count  for  something  as  signs  that  the  Unit- 
ed States  may  be  relied  upon  in  the  future,  but 
it  is  a  question  whether  she  will  be  willing  to  go 
as  far  as  Venezuela  expects  her  to  go.  Ven- 
ezuela's hope  of  aid,  and  her  conviction,  which 
is  shared  by  all  the  Central  American  republics, 
that  the  United  States  is  going  to  help  her  and 
them  in  the  hour  of  need,  is  based  upon  what 
they  believe  to  be  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  The 
Monroe  Doctrine  as  we  understand  it  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  the  Monroe  Doctrine  as  they 


c   a 

CL   «! 


THE    PARIS    OF   SOUTH   AMERICA  273 

understand  it;  and  while  their  reading  of  it  is 
not  so  important  as  long  as  we  know  what  it 
means  and  enforce  it,  there  is  danger  nevertheless 
in  their  way  of  looking  at  it,  for,  according  to 
their  point  of  view,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  ex- 
pected to  cover  a  multitude  of  their  sins.  Pres- 
ident Monroe  said  that  we  should  "consider  any 
attempt  on  the  part  of  foreign  powers  to  extend 
their  system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemisphere  as 
dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety,  and  that  we 
could  not  view  any  interposition  for  the  purpose 
of  oppressing  those  governments  that  had  de- 
clared their  independence,  or  controlling  in  any 
other  manner  their  destiny,  by  any  European  pow- 
er, in  any  other  light  than  as  a  manifestation  of 
an  unfriendly  disposition  to  the  United  States." 

He  did  not  say  that  if  a  Central  American  re- 
public banished  a  British  consul,  or  if  Venezuela 
told  the  foreign  ministers  to  leave  the  country 
on  the  next  steamer,  that  the  United  States 
would  back  them  up  with  force  of  arms. 

Admiral  Meade's  squadron  touched  at  La 
Guayra  while  we  were  at  the  capital,  the  squad- 
ron visiting  the  port  at  that  time  in  obedience  to 
the  schedule  already  laid  out  for  it  in  Washing- 
ton some  months  previous,  just  as  a  theatrical 
company  plays  a  week's  stand  at  the  time  and  at 
the  place  arranged  for  it  in  advance  by  its  agent, 
but  the  Venezuelans  did  not  consider  this,  and 
believed  that  the  squadron  had  been  sent  there 

18 


274 


THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL    AMERICA 


to  intimidate  the  British  and  to  frighten  the 
French  and  German  men-of-war  which  were  then 
expected  in  port  to  convey  their  dismissed  min- 
isters back  to  their  own  countries.  One  of  the 
most  intelligent  men  that  I  met  in  Caracas,  and 


VENEZUELAN    STATION    ON   THE   CUYUNI    RIVER 
The  Barracks  and  House  in  which  the  English  Police  were  confined 

one  closely  connected  with  the  Foreign  Office, 
told  me  he  had  been  to  La  Guayra  to  see  our 
squadron,  and  that  the  admiral  had  placed  his 
ships  of  war  in  the  harbor  in  such  a  position 
that  at  a  word  he  could  blow  the  French  and 


THE    PARIS    OF    SOUTH    AMERICA 


275 


German  boats  out  of  the  water.  I  suggested  to 
one  Venezuelan  that  there  were  other  ways  of 
dismissing  foreign  ministers  than  that  of  telling 
them  to  pack  up  and  get  out  of  the  country  in  a 


ENGLISH    STATION    ON    THE    CUYUNI    RIVER 

Inspector  Barnes,  Chief  of  the  English  Police  who  were  captured  by  the  Ven- 
ezuelan troops,  is  seated  on  the  steps 


week,  and  that  I  did  not  think  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine meant  that  South  American  republics  could 
affront  foreign  nations  with  impunity.  He  an- 
swered me  by  saying  that  the  United  States  had 
aided  Mexico  when  Maximilian  tried  to  found  an 


276          THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

empire  in  that  country,  and  he  could  not  see  that 
the  cases  were  not  exactly  similar. 

They  will,  however,  probably  understand  better 
what  the  Monroe  Doctrine  really  is  before  their 
boundary  dispute  with  Great  Britain  is  settled, 
and  Great  Britain  will  probably  know  more 
about  it  also,  for  it  is  possible  that  there  never 
was  a  case  when  the  United  States  needed  to 
watch  her  English  cousins  more  closely  than  in 
this  international  dispute  over  the  boundary-line 
between  Venezuela  and  British  Guiana.  If  Eng- 
land succeeds  it  means  a  loss  to  Venezuela  of  a 
territory  as  large  as  the  State  of  New  York,  and 
of  gold  deposits  which  are  believed  to  be  the 
richest  in  South  America,  and,  what  is  more  im- 
portant, it  means  the  entire  control  by  the  Eng- 
lish of  the  mouth  and  four  hundred  miles  of  the 
Orinoco  River.  The  question  is  one  of  histori- 
cal records  and  maps,  and  nothing  else.  Great 
Britain  fell  heir  to  the  rights  formerly  possessed 
by  Holland.  Venezuela  obtained  by  conquest 
the  lands  formerly  owned  by  Spain.  The  prob- 
lem to  be  solved  is  to  find  what  were  the  posses- 
sions of  Holland  and  Spain,  and  so  settle  what  is 
to-day  the  territory  of  England  and  Venezuela. 
Year  after  year  Great  Britain  has  pushed  her 
way  westward,  until  she  has  advanced  her  claims 
over  a  territory  of  forty  thousand  square  miles, 
and  has  included  Barima  Point  at  the  entrance 
to  the  Orinoco.  She  has  refused  positively, 


THE    PARIS   OF    SOUTH   AMERICA  277 


DR.  PEDRO   EZEQUIEL   ROJAS 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs 

through  Lord  Salisbury,  to  recede  or  to  arbitrate, 
and  it  is  impossible  for  any  one  at  this  writing  to 
foretell  what  the  outcome  will  be.  If  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  does  not  apply  in  this  case,  it  has 
never  meant  anything  in  the  past,  and  will  not 
mean  much  in  the  future. 


278  THREE    GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

Personally,  although  the  original  Monroe  Doc- 
trine distinctly  designates  "  this  hemisphere,"  and 
not  merely  this  continent,  I  cannot  think  the 


MAI'   KXI'I.AINING   VENEZUELAN   BOUNDARY    DISPUTE 


principle  of  this  doctrine  should  be  applied  in 
this  instance.  For  if  it  does  apply,  it  could  be 
extended  to  other  disputes  much  farther  south, 


THE    PARIS    OF    SOUTH    AMERICA  281 

and  we  might  have  every  republic  in  South  Amer- 
ica calling  on  us  for  aid  in  matters  which  could 
in  no  possible  way  affect  either  the  honor  or  the 
prosperity  of  our  country. 

In  any  event  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  distinctly 
a  selfish  one,  so  far,  at  least,  as  all  rules  for  self- 
preservation  must  be  selfish,  and  I  should  prefer 
to  think  that  we  are  interfering  in  behalf  of 
Venezuela,  not  because  we  ourselves  are  threat- 
ened by  the  encroachments  of  Great  Britain,  but 
because  we  cannot  stand  by  and  see  a  weak 
power  put  upon  by  one  of  the  greatest.  It  may 
be  true,  as  the  foreign  powers  have  pointed  out, 
that  the  aggressions  of  Great  Britain  are  none  of 
our  business,  but  as  we  have  made  them  our 
business,  it  concerns  no  one  except  Great  Britain 
and  ourselves,  and  now  having  failed  to  avoid 
the  entrance  to  a  quarrel,  and  being  in,  we  must 
bear  ourselves  so  that  the  enemy  may  beware 
of  us,  and  see  that  we  issue  forth  again  with 
honor,  and  without  having  stooped  to  the  sin 
of  war. 

Caracas  was  the  last  city  we  visited  on  our 
tour,  and  perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  that  this  was 
so,  for  had  we  gone  there  in  the  first  place  we 
might  have  been  in  Caracas  still.  It  is  easy  to 
understand  why  it  is  attractive.  While  you 
were  slipping  on  icy  pavements  and  drinking  in 
pneumonia  and  the  grippe,  and  while  the  air  was 
filled  with  flying  particles  of  ice  and  snow,  and 


282  THREE   GRINGOS    IN    CENTRAL   AMERICA 

the  fog-hound  tugs  on  the  East  River  were 
shrieking  and  screeching  to  each  other  all 
through  the  night,  we  were  sitting  out-of-doors 
in  the  Plaza  de  Bolivar,  looking  up  at  the  big 
statue  on  its  black  marble  pedestal,  under  the 
shade  of  green  palms  and  in  the  moonlight,  with 
a  band  of  fifty  pieces  playing  Spanish  music, 
and  hundreds  of  officers  in  gold  uniforms,  and 
pretty  women  with  no  covering  to  their  heads 
but  a  lace  mantilla,  circling  past  in  an  endless 
chain  of  color  and  laughter  and  movement. 
Back  of  us  beyond  the  trees  the  cafes  sent  out 
through  their  open  fronts  the  noise  of  tinkling 
glasses  and  the  click  of  the  billiard-balls  and  a 
flood  of  colored  light,  and  beyond  us  on  the 
other  side  rose  the  towers  and  broad  facade  of 
the  cathedral,  white  and  ghostly  in  the  moon- 
light, and  with  a  single  light  swinging  in  the 
darkness  through  the  open  door. 

In  the  opinion  of  three  foreigners,  Caracas 
deserves  her  title  of  the  Paris  of  South  America; 
and  there  was  only  one  other  title  that  appealed 
to  us  more  as  we  saw  the  shores  of  La  Guayra 
sink  into  the  ocean  behind  us  and  her  cloud- 
wrapped  mountains  disappear,  and  that.it  is  not 
necessary  to  explain,  was  "  the  Paris  of  North 
America,"  which  stretches  from  Bowling  Green 
to  High  Bridge. 

THE   END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 

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